Hans Johnson and William Eskridge look at The Legacy of Falwell's Bully Pulpit:
Gay advocates, gradually realizing that they could not beat him through vehemence alone, learned to seek out religious spokespeople, cultivate multiracial alliances and trade diatribe for discipline so as to use Falwell's polarizing statements to gain moderate supporters.
Hmm. Seems to me there is still far more diatribe than discipline among many gay activists, and Soulforce aside, too little reaching out to religious folks (or, for that matter, people of color) who aren't also lefties. Still, as Johnson and Eskridge correctly observe:
By speaking about gay people as outsiders, and even as disease-bearing strangers, he forced many Christians to look honestly at their congregations and reexamine the premise of their faith. By casting gays as threats to the survival of families, he forced parents, siblings and relatives of all kinds to reassess what values bind them together and how they care for one another.
And, from Ann Coulter, just what you'd expect.
12 Comments for “Dark Legacy”
posted by Lori Heine on
I don’t understand why outlets like Fox keep having Ann Coulter on. She smirks and chuckles continually, as if she’s on drugs. She doesn’t seem to believe a thing she says. She’s like a comic strip character that goes on, badly copied by a hack replacement, after the original cartoonist has died.
Her whole schtick is that she persists in promoting tired and stupid Right-Wing beliefs even though more and more intelligent people are abandoning them.
As more gay people come out to their families, their families and friends will learn that the Coulters and Falwells of this world are wrong.
Falwell was taken seriously by a frightening number of people. I don’t know very many people who see Coulter as anything but a joke.
posted by Brian Miller on
Ann Coulter is exactly what the Republican true believers want — someone who dismissively rolls her eyes at the opposition, says every dark thing she (and they) think out loud, and generally treats those with whom she disagrees as “the enemy.”
Falwell was just Coulter under a different guise — equally as contemptuous and self-promoting as she was. In fact, in many ways he was worse — Coulter has never, to my knowledge, asked for a donation from a poor American or positioned herself as a mouthpiece of God.
Reaching out to the religious is all well and good, but at a certain point, the religious will have to start reaching out to LGBTQ people. The continued decline of the housing bubble, coupled with the abandonment of the associated “God will make you rich” churches of the moment, will likely create a lot of new agnostics in the next few years. That will have a negative impact on the population of true believers as God’s promised riches turn to rags and big bills.
But the LGBTQ community will not shrink — ironically enough, due to the fact that it’s demographic reality rather than a “lifestyle choice” ala religion!
I think that religion and religious believers will either adjust to the reality of gays and lesbians as everyday people, or simply fade away into irrelevance — just as various beliefs that denegrate women are going into a tailspin in the USA.
posted by Lori Heine on
Brian, on this you and I wholeheartedly agree.
posted by Brian Miller on
Hurrah!
Now, about those drapes. . . 😉
posted by Lori Heine on
What I’m afraid might happen is that the teeter-totter act between two different factions of extremists may go on and on.
On one side of the seesaw are nuts like Ann Coulter and Jerry Falwell — while on the other are people who hate all religion and can’t even discuss it without growing hair on their palms and frothing at the mouth.
One side will continue to claim that everybody outside their extreme faction is “godless” (to use Coulter’s own term). The other will continue saying that all religion is evil and needs to be abolished. This is nothing more than repackaged Marxism.
The debate will continue. But extremist nuts will never respond to anything but more extremist nuttiness. The question is not, I suspect, whether religion itself will survive (of course it will), but whether we will have a rational and polite discussion about the subject, or whether we will scream at each other.
Will the nuts dominate the issue, or will the sane people handle it? Will the kiddies go on running rampant, or will the grownups take charge?
I welcome the chance to discuss the issue here with somebody like Brian or NDT, who can remain civil and keep a sense of humor. People who, on the other hand, must resort to calling somebody a “fundy housewife” because she holds traditional religious beliefs are not too helpful.
Nursery school is over now. It’s grownup time.
posted by Greg Capaldini on
The more childish voices will prevail over reasonable ones so long as they get more media coverage. Case in point, I’m not sure why Ms. Coulter’s rot and rancor was deemed to add anything to this column.
posted by Mike on
Guys
I’m from New Jersey and I wanted to get your opinion on a film I just discovered
at imoovie.com
I like the Actors, but it did not represent how we are on the North East.
the movie is Eating Out 2 and i wanted to get some oponions
posted by Timothy on
Mike,
Didn’t see it, but did see the first one (Eating Out 2 is a sequal). I hear the second one is not as “good” as the first. Soooo.. If you are bored out of your mind and your local video store has run out of movies. If the library closed and the bookstores went out of business. If your brain melted and dripped out of your ear. Or if you really want to watch a pointless and plotless movie solely because it has gay characters.
Then I would recommend the movie.
posted by Craig2 on
I’m not sure about your definition of (neo?)traditional values, Lori, but mine include fidelity to my partner, responsible parenting, protecting the vulnerable and weak, and upholding prudent and
responsible social values within my local LGBT community. Those were the values that my folks brought me up with and they didn’t change after I came out.
Nor are they affected by the fact that I’m a Wiccan.
Craig2
Wellington, New Zealand
posted by Craig2 on
Oh, and you’ll be happy to know that Ms Blonde Social Conservative La Tourette Syndrome Hack is unknown outside your country. We are familiar with Paul Cameron and California’s Louis Sheldon and his Traditional Values Coalition down here, and the notoriety of Falwell and the toxic Fred Phelps
has preceded them to our shores. Falwell even debated our late PM, David Lange, at Oxford University in 1985 over the morality of nuclear weapons (and
a year later, also voted for the
decriminalisation of homosexuality down here).
posted by Lori Heine on
Craig2: I’m not sure where you got anything, from me, about “traditional values,” neo or otherwise. I mentioned traditional religious beliefs — as in Christian.
As far as Ann Coulter is concerned, what if we all responded to her babble with a collective yawn? She thinks our outrage is fun, and it really seems to fuel her. The thing these people can’t stand — and the only thing that will make them go away — is to make it clear they aren’t worth our time.
I refuse to jump through these people’s hoops. What if they gave a celebrity-worship and nobody came?
Falwell is more of the same. He is (was) a public figure, dedicated to the manipulation of the masses for the purpose of his own self-enrichment.
Paris Hilton with a Bible. Madonna with a paunch.
Maybe that’s why folks from other countries so frequently seem to resent America. We pride ourselves on spreading democracy all over the world. We may or may not be spreading democracy, but we are certainly spreading silliness.
posted by alex on
With the vitriol on this part of the IGF it seems that Jennifer is preaching to the deaf.
IGF: Being Christian / by Jennifer Vanasco
What the world needs is more diversity in Christianity, not less. Christians need to know that being Christian isn?t an automatic Get Out of Jail Free card when it comes to intolerance; gays, lesbians and others on the left need to know that ?Christian? doesn?t equal ?enemy.?