Gary Bauer is like the old crazy grandpa of the anti-gay movement. These days, when he says something, my reaction is more along the lines of “LOL, what?” than anything else. Case in point. Gary Bauer has made a connection that goes like this:
1. Obama supports same-sex marriage
2. Obama is from Chicago
3. There is violent crime in Chicago.
4. (Collect underpants?)
5. ?
6. Profit!/gays cause violent crime.
I, as usual, am not exaggerating:
I’d like to go to Chicago for a second. I about fell out of my chair watching a recent CBS interview with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. He was lamenting the values, or lack of values, of Chicago’s gang culture, as nearly three hundred people have been killed in Chicago this year, many of them little kids. That’s higher casualties than we’re suffering in Afghanistan. Here’s what Mayor Rahm Emanuel said:
“It is about values. As I said then [referring to when a 7-year-old girl was shot and killed last month], who raised you? How were you raised? And I don’t buy this case where people say they don’t have values. They do have values. They have the wrong values. Don’t come near the kids — don’t touch them.”
Well, thanks for speaking up Mr. Mayor, you’re asking the right questions, but sadly you can’t come up with the right answers. Certainly these kids aren’t getting their values from their fathers because they don’t have fathers in their households. For the past fifty years, Rahm Emanuel’s party, the Democratic Party, has made it comfortable for many women to not have husbands in the home. Now Obama and the Democrats have embraced the radical idea of men marrying other men! How is that going to help the black family?
Yes, when I think of the Religious Right, I think, “if nothing else, they’re looking out for the blacks.”
[h/t Brian @ Right Wing Watch]
Umm – we don’t have same-sex marriage in Illinois yet. Ding ding ding – the reality bus is here, Gary! Do you have your ticket?
This is simply another effort by race-baiting, anti-gay pressure groups to drive a wedge between African Americans and gay Americans. Why doesn’t angry, anti-gay activist Bauer tell us what HE is doing to help Black American families? And calling for the removal of health insurance and the social safety net does not count as help or christian!
How is men marrying men going to help the black family? Well, it might remove a significant number of down low men from the hetero marriage market, for starters.
beyond that, I have no idea what it has to do with the black family.
The real problem is the loss of manufacturing in cities like Chicago, combined with white flight, that took jobs out of the cities. Without jobs, many men decided to abandon families they could not take care of. Or, enter the lucrative drug trade where profit margins are high due to drug prohibition.
This situation was partially created, and certainly exacerbated by Republicans like Bauer. He should be ashamed of acting like he and his ilk are the solution, when their policies are a large part of the problem.
Obv iously this man has the born again Christian brain atrophy thing goin on
We gay men have been blamed for unmarried mothers and abandoning fathers for nearly 2 decades now. The numbers within the NO GAYS! who have done it is quite large. So, logically, gay men don’t have sex with women, so we don’t have kids at all, and then we are blamed for the hetero fathers who don’t marry their girlfriends and burden society with unwed moms. Quite a leap, but hey, gay men cause global warming for all I know.
In all seriousness, I’ve lived here my whole life, except for an eight year hiatus in Florida a few years ago. White flight happened to parts (not all) of the city in the 60′s and 70′s – mostly on the South and West Sides. Many heavy manufacturing jobs dried up in the 1980′s, although some remain, and many have moved to the suburbs. Chicago is NOT another Detroit. We still have a vibrant downtown with its markets and exchanges, etc. and unemployment runs at about the national average even in the city proper.
What’s been going on here especially this summer and last summer are turf wars between rival gangs. They open fire on each other with no regard to who’s in between their rivals and them. It happens day and night. It is happening for the most part in African American communities, but is hardly confined to them. Oddly enough, many of these communities are middle class. There have been a few incidents of mob action aka wilding on the Mag Mile and Gold Coast which always generate media attention, as these are predominantly white and wealthy areas, and just happen to be where the television and newspaper offices are located.
It’s going on in many other cities too and is absolutely reprehensible and an outrage. I imagine Bauer seeks to use Obama’s link to Chicago to somehow tie it in to him, as you mention above. I seriously doubt Bauer has ever set the foot 3 feet below his lily white a*s anywhere near such a place, and never will. It’s all too easy to tsk tsk about a serious problem, but his attempt to try to conflate it with marriage equality is laughable.
“Quite a leap, but hey, gay men cause global warming for all I know.”
According to the Pope, atheists are responsible for global warming. You’re off the hook for that one, at least (unless you’re also an atheist).
Jim, of course gays cause global warming. If we didn’t have sex, the excess heat generated during sex would cease and the polar ice caps would expand to pre-Stonewall days. Problem solved.
I love you guys, and Wayne nailed it. It’s been a generational problem, when blacks especially are the least considered in the job markets, any downturns will affect them the most. There is still prejudice out there folks, where job competition is. Ever wonder why when people of color do enter an industry, their presence is suspect as unqualified to be there? But no such suspicion is in evidence when the competition is between white men or women?
Eventually, generations of blacks WILL be affected, by white flight that takes industries with them into suburbs, leaving nothing behind to replace it. When it comes to business loans, and certain zoning areas for enterprise, blacks are left on the lower rung for THAT too.
So then criminal enterprise (or gov’t dependency) becomes the default survival trend. This kind of thing recycles itself, it’s hard not to get trapped in it regardless how hopeful, determined and disciplined a person starts out to be.
It’s wearying to have to convince people who you rely on for a job, to appreciate that, or the people you compete with jobs to do so. That sometimes your problems ARE a direct result of covert prejudice and not your imagination or paranoia.
Believe me, no one really has the energy to carry that chip.
Although many are quick to dismiss you as having that issue, or you’re just lazy.
Another stereotype that makes it difficult to have that honest conversation about the comfort zones some people have with the best and brightest people of color and how many they want to work with, live next door to, or have their children attend the same schools.
One way or another, sometimes people will let you know when and where you’re not welcome.
Now…
As for that a*s, Gary Bauer.
I have appealed to many anti gay people and used the credential of working in law enforcement.
That the true problems are neglect of parents for their children, and essentially making it easier to get a gun, than a job…
I certainly have tried to tell the anti gay, that gay people are NOT the problem, and participate more in the SOLVING of them.
Falls on deaf ears. You can’t tell anyone determined to believe certain minorities are inferior to them, regardless of blatant evidence to the contrary.
You can’t convince people their prejudices are part of the problem either.
So, Bauer can spew whatever stupidity and bigotry he wants to.
He’s not ever going to have to compete for a real job, or real economic stability where it truly matters. He’s another misery pimp, that’s all.
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