I wrote the other day about Alan Chambers’ bizarre talk at the Liberty University G-H8 summit. In case that left you wanting more, here’s Rena Lindevaldsen of Liberty Counsel* speaking for almost ten minutes about how, if Fundamentalists have to abide by the law in our secular society, it’s somehow a violation of their freedom of religion. Uh huh. Just to clear things up: religious freedom doesn’t include the right to lord your beliefs over other peoples’ lives. Note that every complaint Rena has about non-discrimination laws involves conservative Christians feeling the need to use their religious beliefs as a club to hurt other people. THAT is the freedom our opponents fight for. They’re not fighting for the right to believe and worship as they please. They have that, and they’ll always have that, because no one has ever threatened to take it away!
No, these people are simply children who refuse to learn to play well with others, and if I was their preschool teacher, I’d have a really hard time passing them.
Anyway, Rena goes over the Religious Right’s Greatest Hits:
1. Catholic Charities wouldn’t abide by the law in Massachusetts, so they cried victim when they freely chose to close their doors, thereby throwing children under the bus.
2. The photographer in New Mexico who broke the laws of the state of New Mexico when she refused to photograph a same-sex wedding. Was she a photographer working in a religious institution? Oh hell, of course not! She just thought she should be able to deny her services to any groups/people she doesn’t like, much in the way restaurants denied service to African Americans before the law compelled them to do differently.
3. The couple running the bed and breakfast in Vermont who opened their space for weddings and parties, oh, except that one time when (!!!) a homosexshul couple wanted to have their wedding reception there, so they said no, and used their religious bigotry as an excuse to deny that service.
4. The YMCA had to allow gay couples to have family memberships! OH NO! The sky is falling, and it’s like lions are personally eating Rena Lindevaldsen’s flesh!
What tedious whiners!
Anyway, here’s the video, if you want to watch it. She moans and groans about transgender people, GLSEN, Kevin Jennings, PFOX and some other bullroar. But again, notice that NONE of the so-called “religious discrimination” she whines about involves their actual religious freedom. It’s ALL about religious people being denied the right to their own self-appointed moral pedestal over the rest of the population.
(h/t Good As You)
OH AND ONE TIME THERE WAS THIS BOOK CALLED KING AND KING! HAVE WE WHINED ABOUT THAT ONE TODAY? Yeah. She whines about King and King. Again.
Seriously, these fools need some new material.
*Lisa Miller, your client, is still a kidnapper on the lam. Just pointing that out.
I just put this up a few days ago.
Well, oh my, yet again.
Karen Booth wrote: “I choose not to respond to Ben and John because I choose not to respond to any second guessing of motive or to character assassination. ”
I’ll write this even though Karen booth is not officially going to read it. But I hope she does.
I’m trying to find where I second guessed your motives or assassinated your character in my two postings. Other than a reference to the usual homobigotry, which was not (yet) directed at you in particular, and a plea to all “Christians” (you may consider the quote marks to be character assassination, but that’s up to you) not to use the coercive power of the state to enforce upon me religious beliefs I do not share, I am hard pressed to find one instance of reference to you or your possible motives at all.
In fact, all I did was point out what you might call the 1) founding principles of Christianity and the words of your Founder in both posts: take care of those people unable to take care of themselves, mind your own business, love others; and 2) the founding principles of our democracy and every civilized country on the planet– freedom of and from religion.
I can see that for someone such as yourself who is so heavily invested in being “America’s Best Christian” (apologies to the current holder of that title), pointing out your moral and religious failings might be considered character assassination. (Please spare me your self-deprecating protestations. We neither of us believe them, but for entirely different reasons). People who are so very invested in their moral and theological superiority rarely liked to be called on their hypocrisy– another way of saying that the truth always hurts, doesn’t it?
And of course, your motives are absolutely as pure as your character. No homohatred at all. You just want to take one of the odd translations and interpretations of ancient texts that comprise one of your particular beliefs about what may or may not be god’s word on a subject that may or may not be homosexuality and blithely talk about the possibility, nay, the desirability of throwing people, whom you do not know and who have done you no conceivable harm, into prison for offending those particular theological beliefs.
And who could possibly question motives like that, or think that hatred might be behind it, or fear, or self-righteousness, or any other part of the soul-and-spirit numbing morass of self righteous religion in its marriage to the self-serving ideology and ideation that comprises the anti-gay mindset? You’re not anti-gay at all. You love us. You really, really do.
So much that you are just willing to consider throwing us into prison, for our own benefit and the Greater Glory of God. And really, where’s the hatred in that? We should be Good, Giving, and Game for THAT kind of savage screwing over.
You want some sociology? I’ll be happy to provide some. I’ve got an BA and an MA in sociology. One of the things I have noticed ever since I came out and became involved in the struggle for gay rights 40 years ago is the singularly consistent sociology of Institutionalized Fundamentalist Christian Homohatred. It is the sociology of the bully; unfortunately, the whole phenomenon boils down to something as banal and crude as that.
For nearly 2000 years, you followers of the God of Compassion and Love, of Truth and Justice, have used the power of the church, the power of the state, the power of medicine and science, and the power of ignorance and fear, to attack a significant group of people whom you do not know, know nothing about, who have done you– or anyone else– no harm. Our crime is that we are different, and our difference makes you afraid, especially if you can see that you, too, might be a little different in ways you’d rather not think about. You really have nothing else on us but that difference. But that doesn’t slow you down at all. That’s where the whole Pantheon of anti-gay lies come from, whether it is the lie that this is god’s most especially horriblest nasty sin, or the lie that we are child molesters, or the lie that believing in Jesus makes you straight, or any of the rest of them.
Here’s some sociology for you. Homos exist. So do homohaters.
You and your kind– (BTW, I love saying that. Do you like how it feels to you?) have attacked, fired, vilified, murdered, jailed, slandered, castrated, tortured, and burnt gay people, accusing us of all sort of things that are simply NOT TRUE because you don’t approve, or believe your particular version of God does not approve. For 2000 very long years. Your only debate– then and now– is which way is the best way to make the lives of people like myself as difficult and unpleasant, or short, as possible.
Here is some more sociology for you. We have a social purpose– of course. Like the Jews before us, we are defined as the source of all the world’s ills just by our existence. We must be punished, banished into the wilderness, segregated from society for the protection and betterment of that society, which would otherwise be perfect. (Specks and beams are appropriate here). In the mind of the Anti-Gay Industry, addicted to power and money and leading the borg-like ignorant and fearful, gay people become the scapegoats for all of the failings of heterosexuals, scape-goated in service to the wholly imaginary superiority and god-ordained hegemony of heterosexuality. I’m sure that if they could find a way to blame us for over-population, they would. We made Doug Manchester get divorced, after all. Our power is vast.
(Karen, honey, for the record: heterosexuality is neither normal, nor special, nor better, nor holy, nor the only– it is merely common. Also for the record: scapegoats are not only not required for a civilized society, they are not a good idea in a progressive one, and not functional in a reality-based one.)
Typical bully behavior, on the playground or in society. It’s always great– not for the victims, of course– when a bully doesn’t have to be a bully all by himself. Also very typical for bullies: they really don’t like it at all when the victims start pushing back. It makes them frightened because they have to worry whether they will now be the victims. And that is what we see here.
It is not a new thing, it is the same, getting-very-old thing. In each stage as we gay people have tried to claim our full citizenship and our full personhood, we have had to listen to the fears– another way of saying the potential victimhood, at least in their own minds– of the homobigots, paraded as if these were real concerns, verifiable facts, actual occurrences, logical positions. When California decriminalized homosexuality in 1976, the homobigots claimed that this was a direct ATTACK on the sanctity and existence of the hetero family. Man on dog sex! Seriously! When the first non-discrimination laws were passed– yet another attack on family values and hetero hegemony. Domestic Partner laws? An attack on family and god.
And on and on and on.
With the battle over marriage equality, we have hit the absolute lotto jackpot of lies and homohatred, of fear and victimhood. We are a threat You Name It: to children, society, family, law, religion, Christianity, marriage, the Constitution, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the military, santorum-on-dog-sex, the very continuation of the human race itself!!! Wow. Our power is vast. And of course, we are so perverted by our lust that we could not possibly value those things ourselves. Even more proof, if any more were needed, of the threat we pose.
We deliberately exclude, however, this particular bit of proof: none of the things the Religious Reich has declared would result if gay people are treated like full members of the human family have happened, can happen, or ever will. It’s because we ARE members of the human family. Some of us are even committed Christians.
Out of the hundreds of demonstrations nationwide after prop. 8 passed, there were a few instances of something approaching violence, though not Matthew Shepard violence or Lawrence king violence. There was some minor vandalism, but not burn-down-an-MCC-for-Christ vandalism. There were a few other incidents, some regrettable, most understandable, but few traceable or charged to an actual person known to be a homosexual. Some people lost some business, some people lost some jobs. It happens to gay people all the time. That was all of it.
Yet the anti-gay industry and its Religious Reich allies have turned this into a crucifixion, a veritable orgasm of victimhood. The threat was now so great that they couldn’t even be bothered to make a credible case in the trial over their latest attack on gay people. All of the people on their side, batshit-crazy or not, were too afraid to testify for fear of the attacks by the Homosexual Menace. God knows what they would do if they actually had the names and likenesses of their oppressors! William Tam and David Blankenhorn are probably lying bleeding on a fence in Wyoming even as we speak!
Of course, it might really be a matter that even imaginary martyrdom for your principles is just not convenient this week, because your principles are most likely imaginary, too. (See paragraph on founding principles above). That’s apparently what happened with the proponents of Prop. 8. I’m sure they would have had the courage of their convictions, had they had any convictions of greater substance than “I hate fags!” to testify with.
Which brings me back to what started this rant: “”I choose not to respond to Ben and John because I choose not to respond to any second guessing of motive or to character assassination.” Like all bullies, when the real victim stands up and says, “Back Off! I’ve had enough!”, the bully, now frightened, retreats from the field, claims victimhood, and demands even greater power over his victims to contain the threat. Does anyone not think that this horror of a law in Uganda is anything more than that? They’re just trying it out in Uganda and Nigeria since they can’t make it fly here– yet. So brave!
John (and a hat tip to you– you got there faster than writing one of my rants would allow me to!) had it exactly: “Karen Booth ends (perhaps) her participation in this thread by declaring herself a victim, because people called her on her callous disregard for others. Again, she expresses no concern for the real victims this thread is about, gay human beings in Uganda. Hopeless.” I would add that perhaps she should spend a week in a Ugandan prison so that she can note first hand its salutary effects. Do as you would be done by, Karen.
And vice versa.
[...] More Faux-Victimization From The Liberty University G-H8 Summit [...]
Radical anti-gay activists and large, anti-gay advocacy groups want the special right to discriminate against other Americans. They redefine “religious belief” to create anarchy, a situation where anyone can ignore any law based on his/her conscience. One wonders what happens when someone’s “conscience” won’t allow him/her to serve or employ unrepentant homophobes? Will those using “religious beliefs” to promote the anti-gay agenda still be screaming for the special right to ignore and disobey laws then?
Ben in Oakland–*Great* posting!
ps…ummm why does Frau Lindevaldsen look like a five star LESBIAN?! Methinks she doth protest too much.
I wasn’t aware we were rating lesbians like hotels!
Now I know!
Can we rate gay men like that too? So much more fun than the Kinsey scale.
[...] More Faux-Victimization From The Liberty University G-H8 Summit (5) [...]