Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyMay 4th, 2007
Conservative Christian activists have been very vocal – shrill, you might say – in their opposition to HR 1592, a bill that would include “sexual orientation” into the existing structure used to monitor and prosecute violent crimes motivated by hatred of a class of people. And folks of good will and a desire to understand their opposition have speculated on why there is such a swirl of anger, why those in opposition are willing to make outrageous and blatantly ridiculous claims.
Some think that it might be fear of encroachment on the rights of the religious to vocalize their opposition to homosexuality. Others think it might be the codification into federal law of the concept of sexual orientation. Others think it simply that conservatives oppose hates crimes legislation in general and will be against ANY advancement of the concept.
While those are good and smart speculations, I believe the issue is both deeper and simpler than this. Quite simply, I propose that they oppose the bill because gay people support it.
The following is extracted from an e-mail correspondence I had with the author of an article who insisted that he was neither hateful nor homophobic (he was both) and that his motivation was not religious but impartial (he wrote for Catholic publications). Nonetheless, I think it is perhaps the most honest explanation of the motivation behind the opposition to this bill and indeed any bill that is viewed as favorable to gay people.
Conservative Christians, I contend, see American culture as going through a process of radical secularization, i.e., de-Christianization. They see the gay movement and its demands as part of this process. They are fighting to resist this secularization process, just as people on your side are fighting to advance it. They see you people (I mean the advocates of moral liberalism) as aggressors; they see themselves as on the defensive. According to your propaganda, you are victims of would-be “theocrats.”
…
As for myself, I have introspected (honestly I hope), and I find no homophobic feelings in my heart. Frankly, I don’t give a damn what people do in their private sexual lives. But I have a very strong dislike of the gay political movement, just as I have a strong dislike of all leftwing political movements. When I was younger I disliked Communism (I still dislike it, but it hardly counts anymore), and now I dislike moral liberalism and the gay movement. I am sorry to hear that you take this personally and feel that I hate YOU (I am assuming, perhaps mistakenly, that you yourself are gay). But I don’t plan to change my political convictions because you and other gays happen to have some misplaced hurt feelings.
I say to all of you: Grow up. Appreciate the fact that you are living in a free country in which citizens have the right to disagree with your political-cultural agenda.
The objection to HR 1592 has nothing whatsoever to do with the content of HR 1592. The opposition is part of the Great Culture War and is simply an effort to defeat the enemy and his agenda.
And gay people, by definition, are the enemy.
I readily admit that there are thinking and principled legislators out there who have estabished an opposition to the bill based on their convictions and principles. But when it comes to the anti-gay activists and the anti-gay voting block, it really doesn’t matter what we ask for. They will oppose it. Period.
This is the same reason that Exodus will leave “mortality rates” on their website for years that they know to be false. This is the same reason that Love Won Out will suggest that Nancy Heche prayed away her daughter’s gay. This is the same reason that Chuck Colson will deliberately lie with invalid statistics comparisons. (see Jeremy’s analysis at Good As You).
Because it’s war. And when in war, they believe that honesty, accuracy, truth, personal integrity, Christian charity, and basic decency are all secondary to destroying the enemy.
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Cooner
May 4th, 2007
Wow, that attitude is really frightening. Particularly considering that as stated it leaves absolutely no room for compromise or understanding at any level; their solution is “you need to sit down and shut up and get over it.”
I wonder whether their mindset of “gay activists” is stuck back in 1960s and 1970s. It’s certainly an interesting sociological discussion, the reasons gay culture and gay pride and gay parts of cities evolved into a flamboyant, sometimes loud, sometimes angry, and obviously promiscuous lifestyle, clearly offensive to a lot of people, then and now.
But my sense among all my friends, acquaintances, coworkers, and community these days is that that “lifestyle” is now only a small and increasingly less influential part of the entire gay population, and that increasing numbers just want to be able to get along, blend in, mind their own business, and secure some basic social and legal protections without having to make it a big deal that the one they love happens to be of the same gender. It’s really a lot more conservative and family-centric than the anti-gay movement wants to give it credit for.
Of course, I suppose that might be even more terrifying to the extreme anti-gay movement.
Friend Of Jonathan
May 4th, 2007
That is an interesting insight, Timothy. It was not surprizing to see how much prejudice and contempt was laced through the email you received.
I’ve been watching a multi-part documentary on the Civil War, and begining to conclude that the U.S. has never healed from the immense social rift that trigger that war. We remain a society split, some believing in their inherent right to oppress others, and some believing in the inherent right of all not to be oppressed.
The two have diffused more or less geographically, but the idealogical rift is all the stronger for the many defeats the pro-opppression side has sustained.
Lynn David
May 5th, 2007
Communism mostly went away and so they have to Focus their hate to their fellow countrymen, the beginning of fascism. I find people who out of hand label people, non-traditional Families, and their Vales and ideas as liberal as if it is a naughty word to be filled with so much fear and loathing of their fellow man such that they are not be worthy of their self-label of Christian. But it seems that it is those “Christians” are also those who vehemantly insist that they are the “true Christians.”
Emproph
May 5th, 2007
“And gay people, by definition, are the enemy.”
In other words, hatred of us is legitimate. They’re just too dishonest to admit as much.
Did I say dishonest? I meant to say Christian. They’re too “Christian†to admit as much…
Kevin
May 5th, 2007
I find it interesting that this person ended his statement with:
“I say to all of you: Grow up. Appreciate the fact that you are living in a free country in which citizens have the right to disagree with your political-cultural agenda.”
I am happy if someone wants to disagree with me on my political views. However, I am not happy when disagreement becomes reality in the form of oppressive laws based on religious ideas. There is a big difference between saying “I have a very strong dislike of the gay political movement” and fighting like mad to make sure that gays and lesbians do not receive equal treatment in employment, housing and everything else because of some random statements in a religious text. He might think he lives in a free country, but to someone else, this country is not as free as we would like it to be.
homer
May 5th, 2007
I’ve always thought that the conservative Christians have to have someone to direct their hate towards. When the Commies went away in 1989, gay people got the full brunt of their organized hatred.
Kevin
May 7th, 2007
If someone wants to disagree with my political viewpoint, that is perfectly fine. But when it is my life on the line, my right to decide who I love, my right to decide who takes charge in a health crisis or in making my funeral arrangements, I don’t need some faux “moral” traditionalists sticking their nose into my business.
The utter duplicity and willful ignorance of that correspondence is astounding. For someone who doesn’t care what two people do in the privacy of their own homes (and does anyone REALLY believe that point of view from the we-have-the-right-to-demand-the-state-dissolve- TerriSchiavos-marriage crowd?) the writer seems awfully concerned about maintaining laws which demand we be treated as children of the state, rather than the taxpaying, law-abiding citizens we are.
My only message for the Right is this – GROW UP YOURSELVES. It is a little difficult to claim the moral high ground when you manufacture fake “studies” demonizing a group of American citizens, knowingly perpetuate outright lies about their lives, and advocate they abdicate their God-given right to live and love as they were created. If you don’t care what we do in our homes, you shouldn’t care if we get married, since those relations would be carried on within our homes.
It continues to astound me that the same people who scream that we should be oppressed expect others to make sacrifices for no better reason than they choose to believe as they do for themselves. They can’t even own their own beliefs and assign them to their own lives without demanding everyone else do the same – and yet these insecure mental midgets expect their own special rights to oppress others in order to feel self-secure.
The writer may not be “homophobic”. . .but he sure is phobic of just about anything else – including the concept of freedom for anyone other than his own chosen people.
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