Bachmann and Her Ilk Discredit Legitimate Issues

“Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) trotted out her customized views on gays and American culture,” blogs Erik Wemple on the Washington Post site. And though it was not his aim, he shows why she’s the gift that keeps on giving to the LGBT left. That is, her bigotry works to discredit the legitimate concerns some of us have raised about over-reaching by LGBT progressives in a way that constrains rather than expands individual liberty.

To start with, here (as related via Wemple’s posting) is what Bachman recently said:

This is an effort [by gay activists] to have government coerce, force speech and behavior. And it’s being pushed and advocated by the gay community. This is their ultimate goal. It’s to not allow for diversity of opinion on this issue … I believe that we’re going to see coming an effort for multiples in marriage. … I think they want to legalize that. I think also they want to abolish age-of-consent laws, which means . . . we would do away with statutory-rape laws so that adults would be able to freely prey on little children sexually. That’s the deviance that we’re seeing embraced in our culture today.

I’m not going to waste time pointing out the hallucinatory bigotry in those last charges. But as I said, the ugliness of her prejudice makes it much more difficult to engage in constructive criticism of the sort that Damon Linker recently provided. Linker is the author of The Theocons, a critique of the religious right. Recently he wrote:

Liberals usually pride themselves on defending minority rights against the tyranny of the majority—and above all when the tyranny threatens to become more than metaphorical through the use of the coercive powers of the government. Yet when it comes to the rights of religious traditionalists, many liberals seem indifferent, and more than a few seem overtly hostile. …

When the theocons threatened to turn secular liberals into a persecuted minority, I objected. And now, with gay rights activists treating social conservatives like heretics and federal regulators threatening to force religious traditionalists to violate their consciences, I’m doing the same.

“But you’re saying we need to tolerate the intolerant!” — I see that objection every time I write something critical of liberal dogmatism and bigotry.

To which my stock response is: Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying — because that’s what liberalism is, or should be, all about. Toleration is perfectly compatible with — indeed, it presupposes — disagreement. That’s why it’s called tolerance and not endorsement or affirmation.

This is similar to points made by George Will.

Unfortunately, tirades such as Bachmann’s make having any kind of honest conversation about the LGBT movement treading beyond working for equality under the law into, well, something else entirely, much more difficult.

61 Comments for “Bachmann and Her Ilk Discredit Legitimate Issues”

  1. posted by Doug on

    Sorry to say Stephen, but the GOP brought Bachmann and her ilk to the dance, to gain power, now you have to dance with and go home with her. She and her effeminate husband are on your side of the aisle. This is what happens when you make a deal with the devil in pursuit of power.

    No sympathy for you at all.

  2. posted by CMTinPHX on

    One more time: “Tolerance” ends where “wrong” begins. I am not required to “tolerate” someone who insists that 2+2=5. I am not required to embrace as “a diverse viewpoint” the claim that the Earth is 6,000 years old. Wrong is wrong, stupid is stupid, bigoted is bigoted.

    As for Will’s “tangled web” of public accommodation reductio ad absurdum: Either have the moral courage to state publicly that all such laws are wrong, or embrace the absurdity as logic demands you do. Stated differently: Tell me CRA64 and its public accommodation progeny are wrong, and I’ll buy you a beer. Tell me they’re only wrong when applied to sexual orientation discrimination, and I’ll spit in your beer.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      Stated differently: Tell me CRA64 and its public accommodation progeny are wrong, and I’ll buy you a beer. Tell me they’re only wrong when applied to sexual orientation discrimination, and I’ll spit in your beer.

      Precisely.

  3. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Let’s be clear, Stephen: Bachmann’s “ilk” includes the “mainstream” anti-equality movement (AFA, AFTAH, American College of Pediatricians, ADF, Becket Foundation, CWA, Eagle Forum, FRC, Heritage Foundation, IFI, Liberty Counsel, Ruth Institute, et al), numerous conservative Christian leaders (e.g. Richard Land, Cardinals George and Nienstedt), numerous Republican politicians over the years and currently), and numerous members of the social conservative commentariat (e.g. Janet Mefferd, Sandy Rios, Todd Starnes).

    Working in tandem (if not necessarily in concert) Bachmann’s “ilk” have been spreading lies about gays and lesbians (diseased, mentally ill, sex-obsessed and sexually reckless, unstable, prone to pedophilia, perverted, unfit parents, etc., etc.) with a “homosexual agenda” to destroy marriage, undermine the family, recruit/indoctrinate children, and so on.

    The latest variant of the “homosexual agenda”, according to Bachmann’s “ilk”, is twofold: (1) to deploy “the iron fist of the state” to force Christians to “labor in celebration of same-sex weddings” (Stephen’s words, not mine), and (2) to “squelch diversity of opinion” on LGBT issues by using the government to “coerce, force speech and behavior” (in Bachman’s words, cited above). We are no longer, apparently, just diseased perverts bound and determined to recruit children to flesh out our ranks, but “heresy-hunting zealots” of a “totalitarian mindset” (Stephen’s words) out to enslave and silence Christians.

    Bachmann’s latest diatribe (echoed over and over in various forms by the conservative commentariat) is nothing more and nothing less than the latest anti-gay salvo, sometimes masked as an attack on “progressives” and sometimes not, but it has little or nothing to do with “religious freedom”. It is all about discrediting gays and lesbians yet again, whipping up fear and loathing yet again, and singling out gays and lesbians as the objects of special discrimination.

    If this was about “religious freedom”, we would be talking about religious freedom (and non-religious personal conscience) in a general context, in the context of the wisdom, reach and extent of public accommodations laws generally, not just about carving out an exemption for discrimination against gays and lesbians. We would be talking about religious and personal conscience objection in a way that is religion-neutral, issue-neutral and class-neutral, having a discussion about the boundaries of conscientious objection in the public sphere.

    But we are not. What we are talking about is whether or not gays and lesbians can be made the object of special discrimination. Wrapping it all up in high-minded rhetoric about “liberty” doesn’t change things.

  4. posted by Aubrey Haltom on

    Tom, I think you’re right about the national discussion re: “religious freedom”. The only conversation that’s going on at Stephen’s table (apparently) is one that involves discrimination against gays, lesbians and trans people.

    ‘Conspicuous in its absence’ describes the gap in this plea for ‘religious liberty’. Why are the examples Stephen (and Will) reference always/only re: businesses wanting to discriminate against gays and lesbians? How far do we extend this ‘liberty’ to discriminate? Does ‘the religious freedom to discriminate’ apply to: Race? Religion? Gender? Nationality?

    There is a continued silence from the defenders of this ‘religious freedom’ when asked about these questions.

    But there is no silence when it comes to damning the lgbt community.

    So I’m going to take these people at their word. And at the absence of some other words. i.e., I’m going to hear Bachmann’s rant as a response to this issue.

    Bachmann’s quote is not a ‘distraction’ from this fight for ‘religious freedom’ that animates Stephen. I think it is the heart of the matter for most of these ‘religious freedom fighters’.

    So, yes, the answer is that most of these ‘freedom fighters’ want nothing more than to be able to (mindlessly) discriminate against gays and lesbians. They don’t want to consider whether ‘religious liberty’ should extend to anyone or any community other than the one that is the object of their wrath at the moment.

    And people like Stephen, Rauch, etc…, are left to try and construct non-sensical arguments which try to paint this desire to discriminate against gays and lesbians as being qualitatively different than (historical) desires to discriminate against other minority communities.

    Unable to effectively construct such a fallacious argument re: the history of discrimination and religion in the US, they just push the ‘repeat’ button with their cries of “intolerance” and “religious freedom”. Or they merely tell us we’re being “intolerant” while arguing false equivalences.

    I think Michelle Bachmann is quite forcibly expressing the bigotry that motivates this misnomered “religious freedom” fight.

    She’s not an outlier in that crowd. In fact, she’s speaking from the belly of the beast.

  5. posted by Houndentenor on

    Why did this take a week? And why so tame in the condemnation of Bachmann? This is what we’ve come to expect from homocons. Of course if Stephen actually lived in a conservative area, he’d be surrounded with people who say things like Bachmann said every day. He wouldn’t see her as an outlier but as part of the mainstream of what is the GOP in almost every red state. So spare me the pity party for how poor misunderstood Republicans just want “freedom”. No, they want to go back to the days when it was okay not to hire people who weren’t white, male and heterosexual. The rest of the country isn’t okay with that.

  6. posted by Jim Michaud on

    Allow me to break out the world’s tiniest violin for you, Stephen. You dance with the one you brought you. Ms. Bachmann is only the end result of the pandering to the soc cons. No sympathy from me. You made your bed, now lie in it.

  7. posted by Lori Heine on

    Indeed, let’s do have a conversation about religious liberty that soc cons keep saying they want. Only let’s make it a dialogue instead of a monologue. In other words, let’s make it a real conversation. Far from silencing it, we can make it far more interesting than the soc cons want it to be.

    I keep hearing the term “Christians” used here to tar all Christians with the same brush. If the commenters here believe that, they need to get out more. Andrew Sullivan has coined a term, for the soc cons every other Christian sees as counterfeit believers, that I think works very well: “Christianists.”

    My point here is not to determine whose religious beliefs are right and whose are wrong. It is simply to keep the discussion truthful. Progressive Christians, like “queers,” are HERE. Get over it.

    Why is my tax money being used to murder civilians around the world to secure profits for U.S. corporations? THIS Christian wants that question to be honestly considered as part of the “religious freedom” debate. Why are police departments around the country being militarized, and poor kids of color being thrown into prison instead of educated and employed? Religious freedom is being violated when this is kept out of the discussion.

    Any discussion of the “sanctity of life” would examine not only abortion, but the unjust (and racist) application of the death penalty in this country. Again, religious freedom!

    To take money–literally at gunpoint–from Christian citizens to spend on things those Christians believe are deeply sinful and morally reprehensible is to violate their religious freedom. It is done to non soc-con Christians daily. By all means, let’s discuss it. Religious freedom!

    Of course it’s a special carve-out. The conversation would not be limited as carefully as it is if it were not. It’s wrong to force people to bake wedding cakes for those of whose “lifestyles” they disapprove. But nobody ever died because they had to bake a cake, or take a photograph. People are dying because of the ways progressive religious freedom is being trampled by the state. And no, not merely the unborn.

    So the Bachmanns want a conversation about religious freedom? In the words of one of their heroes, I say: bring it on!

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      People are dying because of the ways progressive religious freedom is being trampled by the state. And no, not merely the unborn.

      Do you want to give a concrete example or two of a progressive Christian who died because his or her religious freedom was trampled by the state?

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        Lori, I should note that I am not being either hostile or flippant.

        I follow the religious liberty cases with reasonable attention — I come from a minority religion for which the cases are important, and live right smack in the middle of two concentrations of religious minorities (Amish and Native American) — and I’ve not run across a case in which denial of religious freedom by the government is asserted to have resulted — directly, anyway — in the death of a religious practitioner.

        I’m trying to figure out what you are talking about.

        • posted by Kosh III on

          and I’ve not run across a case in which denial of religious freedom by the government is asserted to have resulted — directly, anyway — in the death of a religious practitioner. ”

          Actually I can. An example of obstinant sem-religious stupidity. In IIRC Kentucky, the state requires Amish to put those orange triangles on the back of their horse drawn buggy when on public roadways. Some refused and yep! Some got run over and killed.
          ‘Cause Jesus hated liberals.

          Can we get Bachmann & Co some buggies and let them ride on an Interstate until the herd gets culled?

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      Agreed. I’d like to extend this a little futher. I have been offended by the term “values voters” for a long time because it implies that only some people have values. Everyone has values. Just because they are different doesn’t mean they aren’t sincerely held. My objection to the Iraq War is no less valid than someone else’s objection to abortion or gay marriage. That was a deeply held belief that it was not only morally wrong but foolish and that it was going to lead to long-term disasters (like what is happening there now, for example). Where’s my refund for the part of my taxes that went to pay for that fiasco?

  8. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Responding to Lori within the limited context of public accommodations laws, I think that the focus on “religious freedom” is misplaced.

    It is misplaced in my view because the end (exempting small, personal/family owned and operated businesses from compliance with the public accommodations laws in a religion-neutral, issue-neutral and class-neutral way) can be better accomplished by a “de minimus” exemption — granting an exemption from public accommodation laws to any personal/family owned and operated business below a certain size (for example, five employees, including family members) — that does not involve the issue of religious freedom and/or personal conscience.

    The “religious freedom solution”, it seems to me, is not only unneccessary, but expands government inquiry/power into areas best left out of the government sphere — questions of what is and what is not a belief based on religion and/or personal conscience, which of those beliefs are legitimate, whether or not the beliefs are “sincerely held” and so on. It seems to me that trying to carve out a “religious freedom” exemption is itself an exercise in limiting freedom of belief/conscience.

    And yes, to those of you who would ask, I would extend the “de minimus” exemption across the board — to age, race, religion, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political belief and anything and everything else. In other words, I don’t think that the reason for denial of service is relevant.

    The only requirement that I would put on the “de minimus” exemption is that the business owner post, at the entrance to the business premises and on any internet advertising, a notice stating with relative clarity the types of persons he or she will not serve, and/or the types of services he or she will not provide. I think that “fair warning” is fair play.

    • posted by Lori Heine on

      I was not talking about the deaths of progressive Christians. I was referring to the deaths of the thousands of innocent civilians our military has slaughtered because U.S. corporations covet their land, their oil reserves or strategic control of their countries.

      I suggested that an expanded discussion of the subject of religious freedom was called for. Such a discussion would, of course, include minority religions, in addition to progressive Christians. I don’t understand the hostility in your remarks.

      On previous commentary threads, I’ve said that I think requiring a posted warning, by businesses who will not serve certain disapproved-of people, should be required if special legal carve-outs are to be given them.

      In my comments on this thread, all I said was that an expanded dialogue was called for. Expanded means, of course, including everybody.

      • posted by Lori Heine on

        To further clarify once again, I’m saying that progressive Christians, for the most part, disapprove of U.S. military policy abroad. And that we do so for religious reasons. And that we’re forced to fund what we view as sin, in these instances. And that unlike merely being forced to bake a cake, or take pictures, we’re funding murder.

        If you need to disagree with me, please pick something real to disagree with.

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        I don’t understand the hostility in your remarks.

        I suspect that you don’t understand it because the question wasn’t hostile. I made that clear. I was simply trying to figure out what you meant when you said “People are dying because of the ways progressive religious freedom is being trampled by the state.”

        If all you meant is that government actions, including those to which we, as individuals, strongly disagree and believe immoral, have consequences — to paraphrase, “People are dying because of our government’s policies …” — then that’s all there is to it. I wondered if you meant something more direct.

        I understand the position you are taking, but I don’t think that it is a matter of “religious freedom” being curtailed, except in the sense that all of us are required to pay taxes that support the government and its policies, whether we agree with them or not. That’s as true at the township level as it is at the county level, the state level and the federal level. In that respect, you and I are no different from any other American.

        • posted by Lori Heine on

          So progressive Christian citizens who believe U.S. military policy to be murderous have no business agitating to change that policy? I strenuously disagree.

          This is not North Korea. We, the People (supposedly) own this country. That means we are never bound to simply toady to our “betters” in government. We put them there. When we disagree with the direction they’re taking our country, we can — and should — remove them.

          I find it amusing that people here mount their high, white horse about the need to force independent contractors and small business owners to serve everybody, regardless of their religious convictions — though, again, they’re not killing anybody. But when a major policy, destroying thousands of lives, is challenged on religious grounds, then…well, we’re all just supposed to be good little subjects of the state and go along with it.

          • posted by Tom Scharbach on

            So progressive Christian citizens who believe U.S. military policy to be murderous have no business agitating to change that policy? I strenuously disagree.

            Lori, how did we get from a discussion about granting personal conscience exemptions to obeying laws of general application to the government or anyone else squelching the right of “progressive Christians” (or anyone else) to “agitate” to change the a government policy with which we disagree? I think that you’ve run the cart way out in front of the horse. Slow down and think about it a bit.

            In any event, you’ll get no argument from me that citizens have a right in this country — constitutional, and foundational to our liberty, extending back to the Magna Carta — to “agitate” all they want about government policies. I do it all the time. We all should. That’s how things change.

            I find it amusing that people here mount their high, white horse about the need to force independent contractors and small business owners to serve everybody, regardless of their religious convictions — though, again, they’re not killing anybody. But when a major policy, destroying thousands of lives, is challenged on religious grounds, then … well, we’re all just supposed to be good little subjects of the state and go along with it.

            Again, I think you’ve got the cart way out in front of the horse.

            Are you suggesting that our political right of free speech has been curtailed? Our right to vote? Our right to assemble? Our right to “petition” (to use a lovely archaic phrase) the government?

            Or that anyone on IGF is suggesting that such rights be curtailed? If so, who, how and when?

            Lori, slow down and think about what you are saying.

          • posted by Jimmy on

            “So progressive Christian citizens who believe U.S. military policy to be murderous have no business agitating to change that policy?”

            They absolutely should do this, but to be effective, they need to organize. They’re way behind with respect to being a political force in the way evangelicals have been since Falwell’s Moral Majority, and they have been controlling the conversation in terms of what “people of faith” think about issues from equality to national security.

  9. posted by Lori Heine on

    Tom, I would invite you to stop condescending to me and listen to your own advice. I realize that you have a law degree and a Y chromosome, but you don’t need to lecture me as if I were a child.

    I was attempting to show how the “religious freedom” debate could be opened wider, in ways that kept it from being dominated by Christian conservatives. I gave some examples of subjects that could be introduced to accomplish this. You’ve been too intent on picking nits to get my point.

    I will spell out my point, since you aren’t getting it. Religious conservatives only want a discussion about religious freedom if they can control it, if it stays on topics with which they are comfortable, and if it can be moved in the direction they desire. Once they see that the conversation will be far more interesting than they intended, and that it will make them very uncomfortable, we’ll see if they continue to push in that direction.

    My guess would be no. But then again, I need to stop blithering like a hysterical woman and think.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      You are right. I am wrong. I am sorry that I offended you.

  10. posted by Jorge on

    Wanted to comment on this earlier but my internet conked out.

    This is an effort [by gay activists] to have government coerce, force speech and behavior. And it’s being pushed and advocated by the gay community. This is their ultimate goal. It’s to not allow for diversity of opinion on this issue … I believe that we’re going to see coming an effort for multiples in marriage. … I think they want to legalize that. I think also they want to abolish age-of-consent laws, which means . . . we would do away with statutory-rape laws so that adults would be able to freely prey on little children sexually.

    I’ve heard of doubling down, but this is quintupling down!

    I’m not going to waste time pointing out the hallucinatory bigotry in those last charges.

    You should. Bill O’Reilly often states a belief that legal recognition of same sex marriage will lead to the courts mandating legal recognition of polygamy. And was it not on this site that I read an article about gay sex parties in Hollywood where there’s lots of drug use and few questions about age?

    The error Michelle Bachman is making is a major and problematic one, but it is one that is very common in religious doctrine, which often posits the existence of a homosexual agenda. She attributes to the gay rights movement and community all ideas and thoughts about gay rights. Not only do they fail to acknowledge the more moderate pro-gay offspring of the gay rights movement, and how powerful they have become, they also seem unable to correctly identify when an idea or action is heretical to the gay rights movement and community.

    This is actually a very typical form of prejudice: the belief that a group of people all believe the same thing, that just because one person says it, they all believe it. Michelle Bachman is not making stuff up. She sees the same events we all do. Where she is drastically wrong is in the connections she is making, the conclusions she is coming to.

    Sorry to say Stephen, but the GOP brought Bachmann and her ilk to the dance, to gain power, now you have to dance with and go home with her.

    I like her too, but I did not dance with her.

    • posted by Lori Heine on

      “This is actually a very typical form of prejudice: the belief that a group of people all believe the same thing, that just because one person says it, they all believe it.”

      Very well said, and absolutely right.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      Not making stuff up? Did we read the same nonsense? She claims that gay people want to eliminate age of consent laws? Who? When? The only thing I know like that was a push to make the age the same for gay and straight people. If anyone made such a statement, it’s some fringe person speaking only for themselves or some tiny group no one’s ever heard of. Bachmann, on the other hand, is a member of Congress and ought to be held to some standard of truth. This is libel and she said it to stir up hate and potentially violence against gay people. I can’t believe anyone at all.

      • posted by Jorge on

        Not making stuff up? Did we read the same nonsense? She claims that gay people want to eliminate age of consent laws? Who? When?

        Good Lord, Houndentenor, I just answered that! Every person who doesn’t ask, thinking the rules don’t apply to them. See the April 28th posting on this site, “Rules of the Game”, and the Gawker article it links to, “The Sad Truths Behind the L.A. Party Scene That Took Down Bryan Singer”:

        http://defamer.gawker.com/the-sad-truths-behind-the-l-a-party-scene-that-took-do-1567145397

        If anyone made such a statement, it’s some fringe person speaking only for themselves or some tiny group no one’s ever heard of.

        Good, Lord, Houndentenor, that’s exactly what I said!

        This is libel and she said it to stir up hate and potentially violence against gay people.

        I believe this was a radio interview. And anyway I’m not sure it’s slander if she reasoned things out in her head so that she really believes the connection she is making.

        (What about reckless disregard for the truth?)

        Yeah, okay.

        But I don’t want to say too much. Even observations that are true can lead to hate and violence. I’ve recently come to believe a little more strongly in that nutball theory (I first learned about it in a class on domestic violence) that the intellectual class of a subgroup is complicit in the political violence of its criminal class.

        • posted by Aubrey Haltom on

          Jorge, my issue with Stephen’s comment re: Bachmann is that she is not the ‘outlier’ Miller makes her out to be. Her comments are not from some “fringe person… or some tiny group…”.

          Her comments are echoed daily by a madcap assortment of anti-gays (Perkins, Fischer, Robertson, etc, and we haven’t even started with listing the other politicians who speak this anti-gay lingo – such as your fave, Santorum, but also including Huckabee, Cruz, even the Pauls get in some nice anti-gay zingers when the crowd is right…).

          And the comments from this wide swath of the religious right and Republican politicians means that this is more than just a group being tarred by association. We don’t have to question whether this group all believe the same thing re: gays. We can go to their websites, their interviews, their emails. We can look at the Republican Party National Platform for 2012 – written by Perkins – and find plenty of outrageous anti-gay comments there as well.

          What Houndentenor was saying to you was that no one who could be considered a ‘gay activist’ of similar national stature (as Bachmann) is making the kinds of outrageous demands that Bachmann claims gays and lesbians are making.

          But there is a plethora of religious right types who constantly and consistently voice the same vile slander against gays and lesbians as Bachmann does. The battle for Stephen and his friends is not because Bachmann is a fringe dweller who makes crazed, slanderous statements against gays and lesbians.

          The battle for Stephen and his friends is just the opposite – it’s because the Republican Party is being led by those who voice similar sentiments as Bachmann’s about gays and lesbians.

          As an aside: How you think a gossip article like the Gawker link you posted justifies Bachmann’s vile outburst about gays wanting to do away with statutory rape laws and abuse “little children” is beyond me.

          (And, btw, the whole thing with Singer has become a muddled mess. The accuser’s lawyer is trying to remove himself from the case.

          However the actual details transpired, I think this comment following the Gawker article says it best:
          “there are times in this piece where you seem to find it newsworthy simply that some gay men like young gay men, and given the history of associating homosexuality with predation, that makes me nervous. ” And by “young gay men” the writer is describing young men who are 18 or over.)

          i.e., the article itself feeds the ‘gays are predators’ smear with its bleary insinuations.

          But you find this Gawker gossip article provides the necessary examples from which Bachmann can draw her ‘gays want to rape kids’ charge?

          How do you connect the Gawker incident (whether the accusations are true or not) with Bachmann’s claim that gays want to do away with statutory rape laws so we can abuse little children?

          You must have some serious gay-hate going on somewhere inside you, Jorge. Even if every salacious detail in the Gawker article were to be found true (and that in itself is a big if)- it would still not justify in any way Bachmann’s offensive accusation.

    • posted by Kosh III on

      “Bill O’Reilly often states a belief that legal recognition of same sex marriage will lead to the courts mandating legal recognition of polygamy.”

      You mean BIBLICAL marriage? David and his 7 wives(and Jonathan).
      Abraham married to his SISTER?
      One of the Prophets commanded by God to marry a prostitute?

      • posted by Francis on

        Just a bit of nitpicking on my part. 1) The Bible does not outright state that David and Jonathan were lovers or married, although I can see how the vague wording would allow you to draw that conclusion. 2) Sarah was Abraham’s HALF-sister.

  11. posted by Don on

    Prejudice and bigotry is based on the fear of the unknown. it always dissipates when the object of fear becomes less unknown AND proved to be harmless. Some fear is prudent: the Soviet Union in the 50s – 70s; some is baseless: racism.

    Politicians on both sides have stoked fears to gain personal advantage. Liberals do it frequently with economic envy, and many conservatives do it with religious hyperbole.

    Irrational fear and political opportunism is the foundation of our foreign policy and has been for the last few decades. Our gargantuan military isn’t able to sufficiently placate all of our fear mongering. And Bachmann is the latest in a long string of politicians who are using fear of God’s alleged wrath to stamp out an imaginary threat.

    Oh, it’s very real in her mind. And there is no convincing her that it isn’t. She masks her fear in a cloak of “faith.”

    But that’s why this particular “fix” of religious exemptions to calcify a right to be afraid of gay people won’t work in the long run. Fear only grows when it’s fed. And this is feeding fear.

    What she, and her fellow believers, really need is a faith that works. Not trembling before G-d. I don’t see that happening anytime soon. But it’s worth a shot.

    • posted by Jorge on

      Not trembling before G-d.

      A good movie, and a wise and virtuous one.

      However, considering that it shows as one of its leads an extremely conservative, closeted, opposite sex-married gay… matron (activist seems not to quite fit) who outright says, “I am not advocating for gay rights”, I’m not sure that will be relevant. If Michelle Bachman had her way, the country would eliminate the closet–and stop, while Christians would follow what some Orthodox Jews have since done and hold opposite-sex marriages between openly gay couples.

      But since this country will not put the genie back in the bottle, Bachman thinks the world is doomed. She is not content to eat the bitter fruits of defeat.

      A faith that works. You know there are still neo-cons out there writing and saying the same things they’ve been writing for the past 10-odd years? They just keep saying the same things from the ash heap of the 4-year history, not angry, or desperate, or superior, but not the least bit apologetic, either, and they keep saying “this can work, today,” and somehow they still have reach. They’re willing to accept defeat, even forever it seems, as the price of their convictions. Then you have those neo-cons who are still in the Senate, they bent toward and accomodated the partisans for a bit, but now they’re back fighting for immigration reform.

  12. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Lori: I keep hearing the term “Christians” used here to tar all Christians with the same brush. If the commenters here believe that, they need to get out more. Andrew Sullivan has coined a term, for the soc cons every other Christian sees as counterfeit believers, that I think works very well: “Christianists.”

    I think that is a valid point.

    However, Sullivan, by coining the term “Christianist” as a way of denoting “counterfeit believers”, is engaging in the seemingly endless intra-Christian debate about who is, and who is not, Christian. In doing so, he is acting no differently than Catholics do when their Catechism denies the term “Church” to Protestant denominations (referring to them as “ecclesiastical communities”) and some Protestant denominations do in denouncing the Catholics, Mormons and others as “non-Christian”. I suppose that such behavior is inevitable in a religion that is based solely on theology rather than ethnicity, but all the internal squabbling makes it very difficult for an outsider to have meaningful discussion with or about Christians.

    In any event, as an outsider, I am not willing to enter into the discussion on terms that posit, as Sullivan’s term “Christianist” does, that any particular form of Christianity is more or less Christian than any other. I will continue, as been my habit, to refer to social conservative Christians as “conservative Christians”, and stay out of the internal Christian debate. It is not for me to look at the thousands of Christian denominations and try to figure out which is authentically Christian.

    Jimmy: To be effective, they [progressive Christians] need to organize. They’re way behind with respect to being a political force in the way evangelicals have been since Falwell’s Moral Majority, and they have been controlling the conversation in terms of what “people of faith” think about issues from equality to national security.

    Progressive Christians have largely been absent from the national debate over equality because progressive Christians have not organized politically and have not spoken out loudly and clearly. The United Church of Christ has been an outspoken advocate of equality, as has the ECLU to some extent, but what of the other “liberal” denominations like the Methodists, Presbyterians and so on? Have any of them entered into the national debate, organizing and making their voices heard above the conservative Christian din? I think that it is fair to say that they have not.

    In contrast, conservative Christians have seized the Christian megaphone, organized politically, and effectively taken over a major national party. Conservative Christians have fought long and hard against equality, designing, funding and providing the foot soldiers for the anti-equality initiatives nationwide, and otherwise, in general, forcing the tip of the spear against gays and lesbians.

    Trying to deal with Christians is a bit like trying to deal with Republicans. All we hear are the crazies. I know, as we all do, that rational Republicans exist and almost certainly constitute the majority of the Americans who vote Republican. But how to deal with Republicans when the party itself has become an asylum of sorts, dominated by anti-gay extremists like Bachmann, Gohmert, Santorum, Stockman, Brownback and on and on down the keyboard? How to deal with a party that turned its “social issues” platform over to Tony Perkins, who is a nickel short of nuts?

    If rational Republicans want to change the fact that the crazies have a firm grip on the Republican megaphone, then they need to push back, something that they have not done (much, anyway) in the past. If progressive Christians want to change the fact that conservative Christians have seized the Christian megaphone, then they must do do what conservative Christians have done, work and organize, and speak out plain and loud.

    • posted by Lori Heine on

      Tom’s approach generally makes sense. I would add one cautionary note.

      Every study and survey basically shows the same thing. That about 20% of the populace is hardcore conservative and 20% hardcore progressive. Neither side will budge, and each cancels the other out. The remaining 60% is somewhere in the soft and squishy middle; they can be won over, in large measure, by either side, though any victory is temporary. They are entirely necessary, however, if anything major is to be accomplished.

      Most people in the middle are intellectually lazy, preoccupied by daily life and not terribly well informed. They can be rather easily swayed, and aren’t terribly discerning about whether what they’re hearing is true, or even makes much sense.

      The social conservatives were in their death-throes as a viable political movement. They were pretty much down to the hardcore 20%. But they took a gamble. They figured that the statist left would behave predictably, and try to ram through all sorts of heavy-handed legislation to seal their victory.

      If this happened, the soc cons planned on playing the victim big-time. They would cry and moan about how persecuted and oppressed they were. They knew that a sizeable number of those in the squishy 60% would buy this. But of course, they needed the statist left’s help.

      And of course the cavalry came through. All of a sudden, we needed “public accommodations” laws to cover everything under the sun. No differentiation was made between police, fire and healthcare services and cake bakers and wedding photographers. Now the soc cons are victims, and on their way to the arena to be fed to the lions. And large numbers of people in the squishy middle are getting fooled by this.

      Make no mistake about it, they are. I engage people in conversation about this all the time, and I’m constantly hearing “Oh, but the gays are going too far,” and “now all the religious people want is religious freedom.” Arguing with ME that this is absurd is barking up the wrong tree; I know all that. But the statist left has, once again, found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

      To working, organizing and speaking out plain and loud, I would have to add, “and stop doing stupid, totally unnecessary crap that works against us.”

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        And of course the cavalry came through. All of a sudden, we needed “public accommodations” laws to cover everything under the sun. No differentiation was made between police, fire and healthcare services and cake bakers and wedding photographers. Now the soc cons are victims, and on their way to the arena to be fed to the lions. And large numbers of people in the squishy middle are getting fooled by this.

        Make no mistake about it, they are. I engage people in conversation about this all the time, and I’m constantly hearing “Oh, but the gays are going too far,” and “now all the religious people want is religious freedom.” Arguing with ME that this is absurd is barking up the wrong tree; I know all that. But the statist left has, once again, found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

        I don’t want to get into another “condescending Y-chromosome” battle with you (and perhaps it would be wiser for me to let others point this out), but:

        (1) Public accommodations laws generally date from the 1960’s and 1970’s, starting with race, religion, gender and ethnicity. Sexual orientation was added in some of those laws as the years went on.

        (2) At present, only thirty states have public accommodations laws that include sexual orientation as a protected class and in most cases the addition of “sexual orientation” as a class dates back to the time before marriage equality was an issue.

        • posted by Lori Heine on

          You are not arguing with the people who need to be convinced; you are arguing with me. That is non-productive.

          If you want to plead your case in court, do you go outside and grab people off the streets, or do you address the judge and jury? I’m somebody off the streets, offering a street-level view. At this point, chromosomes have nothing to do with it.

          It does as much good to argue with Santa Claus as it does to remind me of the facts about public accommodations laws. I am–once again–not among those who need to be convinced.

          • posted by Tom Scharbach on

            Lori, when the people you are talking to start saying public accommodation laws came on “all of a sudden” in response to our successes regarding marriage equality, and that progressive gays and lesbians “found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory” after the marriage cases started going our way post-Windsor, just point out the facts. We didn’t start making much progress on marriage equality in the courts until after Windsor in 2012, and all of the laws adding sexual orientation to public accommodations laws preceded that decision — spanning 1982 to 2009.

            I know that facts won’t have much effect on them — facts don’t, usually — but they’ve got their heads screwed on backwards if they think that public accommodations laws were a result of our successes toward marriage equality.

    • posted by Doug on

      ‘I know, as we all do, that rational Republicans exist and almost certainly constitute the majority of the Americans who vote Republican.”

      Latest CNN polls shows 57% of Republicans want Obama impeached. So much for rational Republicans.

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        Bring it on. The sooner the better. Preferable no later than the end of August.

        But more seriously, there is a significant statistical difference between those who self-identify as “Republican” and those who vote Republican.

      • posted by Jorge on

        There’s a logical case for impeaching president Obama.

        It’s just that the defense is stronger, and people seem not to want to see that.

        The timing’s a bit late to begin an inquiry, the evidence is all circumstantial, there’s a strong rebuttal that President Obama doesn’t micromanage details, the Obama administration has acted with remorse and caution in response to credible criticism (not always, but occasionally enough), and frankly the President’s actions are almost all in pursuit of a credible national interest, agree or disagree with him ideologically.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      Progressive Christians can be effective, if they organize. Tony Perkins is starting to lose his megaphone through the hard work of a progressive Christian group that went to work. Good for Faithful America.

  13. posted by Lori Heine on

    Keep in mind that the social right actually has two distinct components. There are the ignorant, backward, overemotional children who believe that crap, and there are the sociopathic frauds who tell them what to think.

    Sometimes, following in their wake, are a number of the squishy-middles, who happen to have swallowed whatever B.S. the social right is using to chum the waters.

    The frauds in their leadership don’t really believe the stuff they say. I doubt if Michele Bachmann believes a tenth of the nonsense she spews. The damn fools who follow her believe it–and that’s all she cares about. Bush II had nothing but contempt for the religious right–he and Karl Rove used to joke about it, and call them “the nuts.”

    The last thing the leadership of the social right ever really wanted was for “religious freedom” legislation to pass. Such legislation is only useful to them, really, if it doesn’t pass. Think about it.

    Defeated, it’s very valuable, because it can be used to bolster their “poor-us-we’re-victims” line. And that is the lifeline that keeps them politically alive. Had that legislation really began to pass all over the country (and not merely in the small pockets of the country where the inbreds are more numerous than the normal people), it would have spelled disaster for them.

    It would have opened the door to creative ferment–creative chaos. We would have discovered just how religiously pluralistic a nation we really are, as people of all different sorts of faiths (including other Christians) rose up to claim their own religious freedom.

    I tried to give one example of that the other day on this thread, and had to practically break out the smelling-salts to revive all the lefties fainting at the thought. Would it be a special carve-out for anti-gay Christianists? That would certainly be the plan of any of the morons who voted for it. I, however, am quite confident that the actual result would have been good for LGBT’s — and disastrous for our foes.

    Freedom is nothing to be afraid of. I say, let a thousand flowers bloom!

    • posted by Lori Heine on

      We can also consider what the Christianists would actually reveal about themselves if their “religious freedom” legislation began to pass all over the place.

      They’d show themselves, and their “faith,” for the ugliness and emptiness that it really is. That’s it, folks–we can behave like a–holes and be nasty to the people we don’t like! Bible, Bible, Bible! Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!”

      Their bastions in this country are the divorce, infidelity and child-molestation capitals of the U.S. They’ve got nothing to show for all their whooping and hollering and Bible-thumping–except that they spend all their time thumping the Bible instead of reading it.

      They’ve got nothing. Nothing but empty bags of gas like their hyped-up outrage over “religious persecution.” If the laws they keep proposing actually began to pass around this country, what would they have left? That’s right, they’d have zero.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      tried to give one example of that the other day on this thread, and had to practically break out the smelling-salts to revive all the lefties fainting at the thought. Would it be a special carve-out for anti-gay Christianists? That would certainly be the plan of any of the morons who voted for it. I, however, am quite confident that the actual result would have been good for LGBT’s — and disastrous for our foes.

      I guess that I am in need of smelling salts, but I fail to see how exemptions from the public accommodations laws with respect to same-sex marriage, and same-sex marriage alone, is going to lead to anything other than discrimination against same-sex marriage and same-sex marriages alone.

      In my view, that is the problem with the proposed “religious freedom” statutes. If the statutes were written broadly to meet the religion-neutral, issue-neutral, class-neutral standard — for example, a statute providing a personal conscience exemption to public accommodations laws covering any objection to any marriage for any reason, I can see that the flowers might bloom. But that is not what the proposed statutes do.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      Sometimes, following in their wake, are a number of the squishy-middles, who happen to have swallowed whatever B.S. the social right is using to chum the waters.

      I find myself back at a point I made several threads ago. We won the battle for public opinion on marriage equality by using facts and reason. We can convince the American public — the “squishy middle”, if you will — about the so-called “religious freedom” laws if we do the same, that is, use facts and reason.

      So far, in most states, we have prevailed so far. We have no need to abandon what we know works and adopt a “let them have what they want and watch it boomerang on them” strategy.

      Of course conservative Christians are going to play martyr. It is nothing new. Conservative Christians have been doing it for years. The American people haven’t bought it in the past, and they won’t going forward.

      • posted by Lori Heine on

        Perhaps there are enough Americans who see through the religious right’s gambit and refuse to buy into it. I hope that’s true. I hope that enough of the 60% are too smart to believe the soc cons’ propaganda.

        I do reiterate, however, that I think all this “religious freedom” legislation was intended from the beginning to fail. And that it’s far more valuable to the soc cons if it fails than if it passes. I really think it is their plan to stay politically viable.

        Does Bubba know that, out in West Texas? Of course not. Do the half-wits who vote for Michele Bachmann know that? No, they certainly don’t. But if the gambit fails, and the squishy 60% sees through it, then bravo. It would be nice to find out that we do have a lot of intelligent people in this country after all.

        • posted by Lori Heine on

          There is one point I’d like somebody here to clarify. Though I agree “religious freedom” laws are definitely intended as a special carve-out to the religious right, how on earth could they ensure that this would be the result?

          I mean, do they all specify–actually spell out–that ONLY conservative, anti-gay Christians would have religious freedom, and that everybody else would not? I keep hearing that asserted here–with the same certainty as one might assert that tomorrow the sun is going to rise in the East. But I’m just wondering how anybody, on the social right or the statist left, can be so sure that what the soc cons intend would be the actual result.

          I think they’d quickly discover that what they’d created was a raging Frankenstein monster. That it would break through its intended bonds and run entirely amok. Unlike you, Tom, I also think that this would be immensely interesting. Probably even very entertaining.

          The populace would need to get the situation back under control, of course, and pronto. Which could in no way mean anything good for the social right.

          • posted by Jorge on

            There is one point I’d like somebody here to clarify. Though I agree “religious freedom” laws are definitely intended as a special carve-out to the religious right, how on earth could they ensure that this would be the result?

            Well, I don’t actually accept this premise, but I’ll take a crack.

            They’d ensure their goals are met by being right about the legitimacy of their goals in the first place. The premise being that there is only one set of bad guys in the first place, and they are changing and breaking things. Negate and repair that single effect, and they think everything’s back to normal.

  14. posted by Lori Heine on

    Jorge, I agree that’s how people who actually buy into this stuff imagine that it would work. But what about the torrent of other people–from all sorts of different faiths, and variations of faiths–that would burst forth when the floodgates opened?

    Progressive Christians would demand to know why our tax money is funding murderous wars for corporate profits in the Middle East. Muslims would insist on a number of concessions that would be highly unpopular with many people. The government would have to stop harassing the Amish. The possibilities would be endless.

    It would just be such fun! Oh, please…can’t we pass “religious freedom” laws?!

  15. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Though I agree “religious freedom” laws are definitely intended as a special carve-out to the religious right, how on earth could they ensure that this would be the result?

    By drafting the laws narrowly, as the proposed laws are doing, in general.

    Take the Oregon initiative:

    (1) It is narrowly defined to apply only to “deeply held religious beliefs”, excluding any other form of personal conscience.

    (2) It is applicable only to objections to involvement in recognition of same-sex marriages, domestic partnerships and civil unions — “solemnize, celebrate, participate in, facilitate, or support any same-sex marriage ceremony or its arrangements, or same-sex domestic partnership ceremony or its arrangements, or same-sex domestic partnership ceremony or its arrangements” — excluding any other exercise of “deeply held religious beliefs”.

    The language of the proposed statute doesn’t expand beyond those two carefully drawn limitations.

    I agree that’s how people who actually buy into this stuff imagine that it would work. But what about the torrent of other people–from all sorts of different faiths, and variations of faiths–that would burst forth when the floodgates opened?

    The law, as written, won’t open any floodgates. It is narrowly drawn to cover a single issue and a single class.

    Will the law give rise to pressure for additional laws protecting religious objection to other forms of marriage deemed sinful by some — interfaith marriages, interracial marriages, remarriages after divorce? Perhaps.

    But if it does, those seeking religious exemption in those cases will have to get the legislature to expand the law to cover additional situations. As written, the law is explicitly permits religion-based discrimination in a single situation — same-sex marriages, domestic partnerships and civil unions — and nothing else.

  16. posted by Jorge on

    Progressive Christians would demand to know why our tax money is funding murderous wars for corporate profits in the Middle East. Muslims would insist on a number of concessions that would be highly unpopular with many people. The government would have to stop harassing the Amish. The possibilities would be endless.

    Well first of all, our tax money is not being used to fund murderous wars for corporate profits in the Middle East, so they’ll lose that case by default.

    Second, Muslims have already been insisting on–and getting–concessions that are highly unpopular with many people. The right to pray five times a day at work, the right to grow a beard in professions that mandate shaking (although Sihks request the same more often). Meanwhile at least one current appeal in the Amish beard-cutting case raises a very similar question, based on the premise that the defendants did not receive trial by a jury of their peers.

    So when you craft a law that says, “Let these principles apply in this one situation, too”, you are not crafting a slippery slope. When such a law comes from a judicial ruling, you are not crafting a slippery slope any more than you’d have a random chance of an avalanche from any other controversy. Each of the examples you gave has already come up in cases that could reasonably go either way. So, too, is it with religious exemptions on whether privately held corporations need to pay for employees’ abortion-providing employee health benefits. So, too is it with religious exemptions on public accomodations laws as applied to gays.

    But since you believe in the slippery slope, it seems to me that the logical thing to do is to craft laws overruling single judicial decisions. Congress has certainly tried.

    • posted by Doug on

      ‘. . . our tax money is not being used to fund murderous wars for corporate profits in the Middle East, so they’ll lose that case by default.”

      What the hell do you think the Iraq War was all about? It was about OIL and that spells corporate profit.

      • posted by kosh iii on

        And the Afghai war was oil.
        As late as June 01 Bush was about to cut a deal with the Taliban to put a Unocal pipeline across the country from a former Soviet state to the north. The deal fell through. A few months later we invaded. The first US Ambassador to Afghanistan was a former top executive with Unocal and now they have their pipeline and we are out a trillion or so dollars and thousands dead or maimed.
        And Bush and Cheney are living in luxury instead of swinging from the gallows.

      • posted by Jorge on

        The War in Iraq was about consolidating the Bush doctrine that countries that give aid and comfort to terrorists will share in their fate. President Bush said this so many times in so many different colorful ways in the days after the September 11th attacks that I think your suggestion that the war boiled down to corporate profiteering reveals a selective amnesia on your part.

        In order to back up his game-changing and radical new foreign policy position, a second terrorist-sponsoring nation needed to be neutralized, if not attacked outright. Bush chose Iraq.

        Personally I would have chosen Palestine. Which is why he was elected president and I never will be.

        As horrific as the September 11th attacks were, the President measures the damage as limited… and measures the impact to be much greater than the sum of the lives lost! What were the air marshals all about? What are we removing our shoes for? Why is the government scanning our phone calls and surveiling the Brooklyn Bridge? Can’t we out-survive the terrorists and tough it out? The President knows better, for he knows what needs to be done to really hurt this country. He will act to guard this country against such terrible damage.

        I don’t think this exposition makes a whit of a difference, but I’m glad I got it off my chest.

  17. posted by Lori Heine on

    I don’t believe in a “slippery slope.” I believe that everyone’s religious freedom should be protected and respected to the same degree as everyone else’s.

    It would, of course, be better to simply stop the incessant politically-motivated tinkering and just let the First Amendment stand as it is. I doubt the right-wing zealots would wake up to the fact that their tinkering would bring demands for more tinkering, because they are stupid. But then again, as I have said, I think their sociopath leaders never intended for these “religious freedom” laws to pass in the first place. They are indeed more useful to them politically if they are voted down.

    There is nothing wrong with Tom’s reasoning, except that he still seems to take at face value that the frauds who run the religious right are actually sincere in wanting those laws to pass. They aren’t going to want narrower stipulations, because their lunatic base does, indeed, want a special carve-out.

    And Doug understands what the Iraq War was all about. I think most of the commenters here do.

    • posted by Houndentenor on

      “Slipper Slope” arguments are just an admission by the user that they have no valid argument at all. All law is about allowing this but not that. It’s okay to drive one speed but one mph higher is against the law, for example. We set limits and address issues as they come up. We also change laws as needed. If the only argument against same sex marriage is that it might lead to polygamy then they had better start getting their anti-polygamy arguments ready, and they are going to need better ones than “what about the children!” and “This isn’t how it always was!” (especially weak in this case since that’s exactly how it was and is in much of the world).

      The religious right isn’t about morality anyway. Look how many of them get caught doing the very things they rant against. No, it’s about institutionalized hypocrisy in which we all lie and pretend we aren’t doing things that we are. I’m glad to see society evolving past the practice of everyone lying to pretend they are something they are not. That was never a healthy environment for anyone.

  18. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    There is nothing wrong with Tom’s reasoning, except that he still seems to take at face value that the frauds who run the religious right are actually sincere in wanting those laws to pass. They aren’t going to want narrower stipulations, because their lunatic base does, indeed, want a special carve-out.

    I take the laws that are proposed, not those who propose them, at face value. Laws, like facts, are stubborn things; laws, like facts, have substance.

    Motives are an entirely different thing. The sponsors of the proposed laws may have hearts as pure as snow, for all I know, and may be motivated entirely by G-dly purpose. Alternatively, they may be, like the politicians who manipulated fear and loathing about gays and lesbians into a successful nationwide anti-marriage amendment campaign during 2004-2006, lying sociopaths manipulating unsophisticated people for selfish gain. I’ve not commented on it, because I don’t care.

    What counts is what they do. And what they are doing is proposing laws, like the Oregon law I linked, narrowly crafted to single out gays and lesbians, and gays and lesbians alone, as objects of special discrimination, using the power of the government to legitimize discrimination against gays and lesbians.

    That’s all the farther need to look, and that is all the farther anyone needs to look. Look at the facts right under your nose. Forget the motives.

    • posted by Lori Heine on

      Sounds all matter-of-fact and masculine-y, Tom. “Just the facts, ma’am.” And if we were all automatons instead of human beings, you’d be right.

      The problem is that the motives do matter. What we have is a closed loop of power, in which left and right play against and feed off of one another. People can only break out of the loop and really resolve the important issues to a lasting degree when they recognize this.

      I disagree that a significant number of the fence-sitters LGBT’s need on our side will ever be consistently won over until we deal with the statist left’s compulsion to goad us, again and again and again, into picking up a big stick and hitting our opponents with it every time they do something we don’t like.

      You think such a course makes us rational and decisive. I think it drags us down to the level of cave-dwellers, or two-year-olds. I suppose we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        I want to state this carefully, Lori, so that there is no misunderstanding.

        I am unwilling enter into or to take a side in the longstanding intra-Christian theological battles. It is not that I have no opinion of the matter, but it is none of my business, and, as an outsider, I have absolutely no basis on which to decide that one Christian sect is more Christian than the others, or that one is less Christian than the others.

        I am also unwilling to enter into or take a side in an intra-Christian squabble over “good motives” and “bad motives”. Christians engaged in the intra-Christian argument over gays and lesbians each accuse the other side of “bad motives” while claiming “good motives” for themselves. I have no way of determining whose motives are “good motives” or whose motives are “bad motives”, and the bottom line is that it makes no difference to me whether one side or the other has dirty hands, theologically or in terms of motive.

        Christians and people of my religious/ethnic background have a long, tragic and bloody history, almost entirely one-sided, which has abated of late in both the United States and Europe. But while active denunciation and persecution has ceased, at least for the time being, modern Christians display no more concern for the well being of people of my faith/background today than they throughout history. We find ourselves — and the state of Israel, most particularly — the subject of an apparently intense intra-Christian debate about the last days and the second coming of your man-god, in which both Israelis and Palestinians are being played as pawns in an internal war, an intricate, reckless and dangerous theological dispute that plays out in our nation’s foreign policy and politics. Amidst the carnage of the past and the heated debates over the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts of the present, I individual Christians have acted, often in opposition to their co-religionists, in selfless, courageous ways that should make all of use proud to be human beings.

        It would be wrong of you to assume that I ascribe benign intent to Christians. I have no reason to do so. It would be equally wrong for you to assume that I ascribe malignant intent to Christians. I have no reason to do that, either. And that applies with equal force to “progressive Christians”, “conservative Christians” and to Christians who are outside either of those camps.

        I have my opinions, of course, but I don’t comment, particularly not to Christians, and certainly not in the public forum.

        I am interested in Christian words and actions about gays and lesbians, the fruit of Christian theology and motive, good or bad. I am interested in the results of those words and actions in the public and political arena. I comment on those matters frequently and I will continue to do so.

        But no further. I will not enter into a debate about Christian theology or Christian motives.

        You can goad me until the end of time — “Male-Y” and all that — and my position will not change. I will not enter into the intra-Christian debate.

        You will have to be content with that, I guess.

        • posted by Lori Heine on

          Ah, now I see part of the problem.

          Tom, you are reading religion into my last comment. In fact it had nothing whatsoever to do with religion. I was commenting on politics.

          It’s fine with me if you don’t want to debate Christian theology or motives, since that’s not what I was talking about in the first place.

          The debate of which I speak is the American politican, left-versus-right debate. Which is open to all comers of every faith and of no faith at all. I have no interest in your opinions on the intra-Christian debate, because you have aren’t even a part of it.

          I’m sorry you had to grind out a ten-paragraph comment to respond to something I wasn’t talking about in the first place. But if you don’t regret wasting the time, I suppose I am content with that.

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        You think such a course [“…the statist left’s compulsion to goad us, again and again and again, into picking up a big stick and hitting our opponents with it every time they do something we don’t like …”] makes us rational and decisive. I think it drags us down to the level of cave-dwellers, or two-year-olds. I suppose we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

        Yup, I guess so. I suspect from your past comments that you think public accommodations laws are unwise, if not necessarily unwarranted. I disagree. I think that, for most part, the laws are beneficial.

        Wise or unwise, the public accommodations laws were enacted for a reason, and, in the states in which sexual orientation was added as a protected class, the laws were expanded for a reason.

        None of those reasons had anything to do with the current flap over same-sex marriage. The public accommodations laws, in the states that have them, were enacted before (in many cases a decade or more before) marriage equality came to pass.

        For your future reference in dealing with social conservatives who argue that public accommodations laws came on “all of a sudden” in response to our successes regarding marriage equality, think about this table:

        1982: Wisconsin – 2014 (32)
        1989: Massachusetts – 2004 (15)
        1991: Connecticut – 2008 (17)
        1992: New Jersey – 2013 (21)
        1992: Vermont – 2009 (17)
        1993: Minnesota – 2013 (20)
        1995: Rhode Island – 2013 (18)
        1998: New Hampshire – 2010 (12)
        2002: New York – 2011 (9)
        2004: New Mexico – 2013 (9)
        2005: California – 2008 (3), 2013 (7)
        2005: Maine – 2012 (7)
        2006: District of Columbia
        2006: Hawaii – 2013 (7)
        2006: Illinois – 2014 (8)
        2006: New Jersey – 2013 (7)
        2006: Washington – 2011 (5)
        2007: Iowa – 2009 (2)
        2007: Oregon – 2014 (7)
        2007: Colorado – 2014 (7)
        2009: Delaware – 2013 (4)
        2009: Nevada – Pending
        2009: Maryland – 2013 (4)

        The first and second columns [e.g. “1982: Wisconsin”] are the year in which a state included sexual orientation in public accommodations laws. The third and fourth columns [” – 2014 (32)”] is the year in which a statute or court decision mandated marriage equality and the number of years that elapsed between the public accommodations laws and marriage equality.

        I hope that the table might be helpful. We are on the same side of the issue; we differ about tactics and, perhaps, strategy, but not about the essentials.

        • posted by Lori Heine on

          Tom, thanks for the table. I appreciate your ability to gather the facts and present them in an understandable way.

          I support public accommodations laws only insofar as they cover police, fire, medical, public transit and other essential services that are either (A) of life-and-death importance and/or (B) funded by our tax money. In rural and remote areas, I support them for necessary businesses like groceries, etc. For small businesses and independent contractors, I do not support them. Why help big corporations drive the little people out of business?

          When changes happen in society, they are NEVER because government acted first. Government never acts first. It is run by politicians, who never do anything without wetting their fingers and sticking them into the wind to see which way it’s blowing. Societal change ALWAYS happens because it has at least begun to be evidenced in the attitudes of the people. In this case, I don’t believe we need to use government to run up the score; we’re already winning.

          I believe sunlight really is the best disinfectant. Let’s keep the spotlight on what crappy excuses for human beings most of our adversaries really are. We don’t need to get into whether they’re good Christians or bad Christians. We can simply shed light on their behavior. Would most people approve of it if they knew more about it?

          In Uganda, American evangelicals pressured the Ugandan government to pass anti-gay legislation so extreme, it would have executed gay people simply for being gay. This wasn’t originally the Ugandans’ idea; it was the American evangelicals’. These sterling crusaders against immorality actually threatened the Ugandan government with cessation of aid if it didn’t comply. In other words, they were willing to starve Ugandans to death if they couldn’t strongarm them into killing gays.

          Wonderful folks. But do most of the American people even know that? I can’t help but believe we’d hear less mealy-mouthing from them about “religious freedom” if they did.

          The focus should not be on grandstanding politicians and activists, out to enhance their own reputations and further their own glorious careers by getting this or that law passed for this or that noble progressive purpose. It should be on “just the facts, ma’am.”

          See, I actually like facts, too. I like them so much, I’m willing to trust their power.

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