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 lobbyOctober 7th, 2011
Mat Staver, head of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University’s law school, appeared on an American Family Association radio program this morning just before introducing GOP presidential candidate Sen. Rick Santorum at the Values Voter Summit. Staver told AFA Radio that “the sexual anarchy with the agenda of the homosexual movement” threatens the survival of Western Civilization:
Staver: We are facing the survival of western values, western civilization. And I think those survival, whether they win or lose, what will the future of America be will be determined in our lifetime…. One of the most significant threats to our freedom is in the area of sexual anarchy with the agenda of the homosexual movement, the so-called LGBT movement. It does several things, first of all it undermines family and the very first building block of our society, but secondly, it’s a zero sum game as well and it’s a direct assault on our religious freedom and freedom of speech.
Do you really want to know what threatens the survival of Western Civilization? Well, if one of the great pillars of Western Civilization is the rule of law, then Staver’s Liberty Counsel and law school pose a far greater threat to Western Civilization than treating all people equally. Members of Staver’s organizations have been implicated in facilitating the kidnapping of then- seven-year-old Isabella Miller-Jenkins, in defiance of a court order ordering Isabella’s mother, Lisa Miller, to turn custody of the child over to her other mother from a civil union, Janet Jenkins, after Miller refused to follow to previous court orders granting visitation rights. There is considerable evidence that Miller may be following the advice of legal counsel in defying the courts’ rulings. Teachers at Staver’s law school presented a case study that was remarkably similar to the Miller-Jenkins case, and taught students that, as future lawyers, they should encourage their clients to chose “God’s law” over “man’s law” and defy the legal system. Students who responded on an exam that the client should follow the court order were given bad grades, while students who responded that the client should be urged to break the law got A’s.
If there is a threat to Western Civilization, it’s posed by those who would impose legal anarchy to further their narrow religious agenda in open defiance of the law.
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JT
October 7th, 2011
Yes, well, obviously it was the homosexuality of every single one of the late Roman emperors, and not their religious-fueled mania that they were carrying out the will of the gods (which only they could properly divine) or thinking they were the equivalent of gods and therefore above the law that led to the downfall of Rome.
bls
October 7th, 2011
Gays invented Western Civilization.
Nick Thiwerspoon
October 7th, 2011
These ppl are quite, quite batty. No grasp on reality at all.
Jonathan Oz
October 7th, 2011
Funny thing. No major figures in the LGBT community have advocated limiting the religious freedom of these loons to worship as they please, to restrict marriage within their places of worship to mixed sex affairs, or to speak their minds. People have said that they do not have the right to inflict their specific values on others who may not agree. As Jon Stewart famously said, “if you don’t like gay marriage, then don’t marry one.”
We live within a pluralistic society. They have the right to believe and worship as they wish. They do not have the right, nor should they expect, the rest of society to agree with them, nor to accept participation in their religious rites as the cost of participation in public forums.
Jarred
October 7th, 2011
It does several things, first of all it undermines family and the very first building block of our society, but secondly, it’s a zero sum game as well and it’s a direct assault on our religious freedom and freedom of speech.
So wait, for Matt Staver to have freedom of religion, he needs the right to tell me who I can and can’t marry, date, sleep with, and/or build a family with? The fact that Matt Staver apparently cannot see how messed up that is troubles me.
Regan DuCasse
October 8th, 2011
Let them go ahead and teach their law students like this. They sure will be crappy lawyers!
SirAndrew
October 8th, 2011
He’s right. After all, gay marriage DID kill the dinosaurs.
elaygee
October 8th, 2011
I think they are a more serious threat than we give them credit for. They subscribe to the Joseph Goebbels theory of propoganda, repeat lies often enough until your target audience believes it is the truth.
These people will round us up and kill us if we let them go unchallenged and they manage to take over.
dave
October 8th, 2011
Religion is a form of mental illness.
CPT_Doom
October 8th, 2011
You see, it’s sexual anarchy for two men or two women to make a lifelong monogamous commitment to one another; it’s NOT sexual anarchy for a GOP Presidential contender to dump his current wife for a younger, hotter version.
Priya Lynn
October 8th, 2011
“He’s right. After all, gay marriage DID kill the dinosaurs.”.
LOL, Andrew.
cd
October 8th, 2011
You’ve got to wonder whether the Religious Right is mostly just a front organization for a bunch of people who all have prurient sexual thought OCD.
Lately everything seems to threaten the downfall of Western Civilization, btw. Gay rights, brown skinned people with ancestry from Mexico, uppity urban women, atheists, a shortage of cheap petroleum, illiterate villagers with AK-47s in the Hindu Kush…. It seems a pretty frail thing this Western Civilization thing- just how did it get this far?
Richard Rush
October 8th, 2011
dave said, “Religion is a form of mental illness.”
Good luck with that. Mental states or traits that are shared by a majority of people are rarely viewed as mental illness, sinister, decadent, sin, evil, immoral, wicked, depraved, perverse, or degenerate – although I guess we have to remember the Christian qualifier cited while they rant about the sins of others, “we are all sinners.”
For example, left-handedness, which today is generally viewed as innocuous, was not always viewed that way. Obviously, if the overwhelming majority had been left-handed, the reverse would be true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_against_left-handed_people
Regan DuCasse
October 8th, 2011
In so many ways, their broad generalizations have no meaning to what they actually practice.
Let’s say for example, their insistence that those who don’t reproduce threaten the survival of the species.
Even in ancient cultures where the spectre of disease, shorter lifespans and infant and maternal mortality were the risks within any given family or tribe, it was one’s own clan and tribe that were given priority and war on anyone else’s was expected.
Murder of anyone outside of those close ties, tribal and blood rivalries aren’t much lessened are they?
That is what the feudal violence is about in Afghanistan, or Iraq is.
It would be happening whether we were there or not.
Closer to our own culture, ALL children are of no concern whatsoever to these religious rightwingers, let alone the ability for a woman in particular to have autonomous control over whether she even WANTS a child or not.
With our own eyes we can see the limits of which children are better in their eyes than others, which children deserve more than others, and which children they themselves WOULD sacrifice were they given the chance.
Their actions belie their words. There are political feuds between different religious factions (like say between Mormons and fundie Christians, Southern Baptists and Jews), there are calls to action against gay people for religious reasons with no sense of irony, or hypocrisy, let alone rationality in context to the Constitution and Bill of Rights we all rely on.
As I’ve asked these people over and over, when, WHEN has a Western Civilization EVER suffered, or individuals or a neighborhood or society…from expanding fairness, equal treatment and justice to those who hadn’t had it in the past?
And their answer is more of the victim mentality, and sense of persecution for having those rights and freedoms SHARED.
Even if it’s not at the expense of anything they have.
It’s assuring THEIR TRIBE is always privileged and assured safety that matters. Period.
Just like the barbaric and reactionary tribes of old.
The idea that anyone actually IS more enlightened, intelligent and courageous than they are in a 21st century context is too much for their FRAGILE EGOS.
And they are willing to make others pay in the worst way for THEIR lack of spine,smarts and intelligence because they hate THAT most of all.
San Diego Rob
October 8th, 2011
Please stop accusing us for all the woes in the heterosexual family. We are not the cause for divorce, abandonment, and many other issues facing HETEROSEXUAL families. Gay people come from HETEROSEXUAL families.
homer
October 9th, 2011
I wouldn’t hire a lawyer who graduated from Liberty.
Bob
October 9th, 2011
What surprises me is how all the right wing Christians have an enormous interest in Homosexuality. It it the image of 2 muscular, hairy, sweaty, well endowed men going at it tooth and nail or the image of 2 beautiful, shapely women making love? I find it hysterical that almost every heterosexual couple I know is now engaged in cheating on their spouses—I guess that’s OK with the Christian right wing!
MJC
October 9th, 2011
Elaygee, I have noted the same similarity: the right wing draws from Dr. Goebbels playbook. I know it is unfashionable to invoke the Nazis. but I am quite well read on that era; the faux outrage and victimization–which frees them from acknowledging actual victims, the made-up perpetrators of evil, the disdain for intellectuals and the arts, even the coded language—it’s all there for anyone to see. Consider how the right wing has taken up the cudgel of ‘class warfare’ (used against the Democrats and Wall Street protestors) when they have successfully practiced it for 50 years. Glad you have picked up on it as well.
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