Catholic leaders issued a letter Friday to GOP presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, themselves Catholics, urging them “to stop perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes on the campaign trail.”
The letter, signed by 45 Catholic leaders says:
Mr. Gingrich has frequently attacked President Obama as a “food stamp president” and claimed that African Americans are content to collect welfare benefits rather than pursue employment. Campaigning in Iowa, Mr. Santorum remarked: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”
“At a time when nearly 1 in 6 Americans live in poverty, charities and the free market alone can’t address the urgent needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. And while jobseekers outnumber job openings 4-to-1, suggesting that the unemployed would rather collect benefits than work is misleading and insulting,” the letter adds.
See, the problem with their request, as Gingrich and Santorum likely see it, is that they’re at the point where they’re having to pander to the nasty Republican base, the base that absolutely lost it when Juan Williams dared to even bring up the subject of racism during the Fox News Republican debate on Martin Luther King Day, and during the same debate, booed Mitt Romney for having family born in Mexico. Racism isn’t icing on the cake for these people — it’s central to their governing platform.
Also, lest we forget, they’re running against the re-election of a black, Democratic president.
Glad those Catholic leaders are at least trying to say something, but I think it’s falling on deaf ears.
Roy Edroso shortened this piece by Mark Krikorian at the National Review as, “What good are wetbacks if we can’t use them against faggots?” Then he added, “you think I’m kidding?!”
Sadly, Roy is not kidding, for if you click on the piece by Krikorian, you see a lot of verbose garbage that could indeed be reduced to that base, racist sentiment. Look:
While Hispanic immigrants, like black Americans, are conservative on certain social issues (though not as much as some might think), it doesn’t matter politically. As one political scientist recently put it, in reaction to a new poll:
“It’s always been said that Latinos have a conflict between their religion and their political tendencies. That they’re usually more progressive on economic policy but conservative on social issues,” said Matt Barreto, a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle and advisor to Latino Decisions.
However, Barreto said the poll reflects no such conflict: “Religion and social and moral values are not among their priorities when they make their political and election calculations.”
That’s part of the reason why California, the state with the largest share of immigrants in its population, has “the first state law mandating lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history and social science curricula.” It’s not that immigrants demanded this nonsense; they probably don’t even like it very much. But their large-scale presence solidifies the position of the Left, making this kind of thing possible, and they aren’t turned off by it enough to rebel against it. When there’s a referendum, sure, they’ll vote against gay marriage, for instance, but that’s not the way most social policy is made. Both by importing faithful Democratic voters and through sheer numbers creating more safe leftist seats in local and state and federal legislatures, mass immigration empowers statism and cultural leftism.
It’s all a conspiracy by the “leftists” and the “statists” and the gays to “import Mexicans” in order to create laws mandating that gay history be taught in California, you see. Now, what I want you to notice about this fine wingnut hackery is just how many of their ooga-boogas it involves. You’ve got big gub’mint, you got lib’ruls, you got gays and you’ve got “illegally imported” Mexicans! This works on their readers because wingnuts don’t have to explain anything. They just have to invoke the specter of things their readers are afraid of and it’s considered a Q.E.D. situation.
It’s not that Democrats are necessarily bad (well, the slaveholder part was bad, but we finally beat that out of them),
By turning them into Republicans…
But it does mean that any successful GOP effort to woo immigrants and their children will take generations — and if small-government, morally traditionalist, pro-sovereignty conservatism is to have any chance of lasting political success during our lifetimes, future immigration must be curbed.
In order to keep ‘Murka pearly white, Christian and heterosexual, we have to keep dark-skinned people out. Gotcha.
How exactly has conservative rhetoric changed in the past forty years?
GOP presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry (TX) has faced severe backlash this week as the result of stories that he had opposed a campaign to remove the Confederate battle flag from statehouses across the South and that he had hosted family and friends at a West Texas hunting camp that once read “Niggerhead” on its entrance gate. Yesterday on Mike Gallagher’s radio show, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) defended Perry. “Rick Perry is not a racist,” Graham said, saying the Texas governor is the victim of an “intimidation” campaign. “You know if you’re a southern white guy, it is part of your life,” Graham complained.
I cannot imagine the pain and suffering Lindsey Graham has experienced at the hands of poor black people. Maybe one day he will dramatize it for us, in sequins, so that we may understand.
If you want to hear the audio version of this particular malarkey, click the above clicky.
As I’ve said before, when the wingnuts start losing Fox, that really means they’ve lost the war. Porno Pete has a desperate missive on his little hate dungeon blog, begging Fox News to please make it clear that they hate and are as bizarrely fixated on gays as much as Pete is:
Dear Readers,
One of the reasons we are in such big trouble regarding the promotion of homosexuality in our culture is that “conservatives” have stopped acting conservatively on this particular (sin) issue.
When Pete uses the word “conservative,” he means “backwoods, uneducated and medievally bigoted for no other reason besides the fact that Mommy and Daddy taught me to be.”
A good example is frequent FOX News guest Margaret Hoover. She espouses legalized homosexual “marriage” as a Republican Party and “conservative” issue — despite the longstanding GOP platform planks against counterfeit “same-sex marriage” and other aspects of the larger homosexual agenda. Please read below as Hoover makes the same fraudulent connection between homosexuality and race that drives Blacks nuts when it’s trotted out by “gay’ activists and liberals…
Pete is so concerned about The Blacks that he capitalizes “blacks.” Of course, there are many The Blacks who aren’t driven “nuts” by that comparison. The late Coretta Scott King was a notable one. Civil Rights leaders like John Lewis, who actually know something about the Civil Rights Movement, are also worthy of mention. Julian Bond, the chair of the NAACP…
Et cetera, et cetera.
But please do remember, that Porno Pete is an expert on The Blacks, as he has a long history of co-opting them for bigoted purposes. They’re tight!
We Republicans have often found ourselves on the wrong side of civil rights struggles since the 1960s, but there was a reason that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s father is said to have supported Republicans.
Republicans were historically the party ever-expanding freedom to disenfranchised minorities, from newly liberated slaves to giving women the right to vote. Susan B. Anthony was a Republican. By supporting the [pro-homosexuality American Foundation for Equal Rights trial against California's Proposition 8 upholding traditional marriage as between a man and a woman] we have an opportunity to establish our historic credibility on civil rights issues once again. But we should support marriage equality because it is the right thing to do.
Gays and lesbians are our friends, neighbors, doctors, colleagues, sisters and brothers. Does it sit well with you that because of their sexual orientation, a factor outside one’s control, that they should have less rights and protections in the eyes of the law?…
That’s why the Supreme Court, in 1967 Loving v. Virginia, legalized interracial marriage –six years after our current president was born to an interracial couple. At that time 73% of the population opposed “miscegenation.” How long would it have taken to change popular opinion, for the minority to democratically win their constitutional rights? As Martin Luther King, Jr. famously asserted, “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
Yay, Margaret Hoover.
Anywho, he’s really upset that that was on the Fox News website, and that his beloved wingnut network is slowly beginning to tell his kind to go to hell on these issues. It’s a slow process, but it is indeed happening, and the reason, which Pete et al. have never been able to understand or accept, is that News Corp never actually cared about them or respected their beliefs as people, but simply saw them as a ratings demographic — the bitter, cranky, whiny, low-information white set of voters — and has played that card for all it’s worth. But Fox News also recognizes that, though there is still some steam in that demographic, even they are slowly starting to abandon the bigotry of old when it comes to gays. Simply put, there’s a hell of a lot of Teabaggers who have gay relatives and neighbors and sons and daughters, and though the network can still play ooga booga with them on make-believe black crime waves and presidential birth certificates, peddling anti-gay bigotry just isn’t such a safe bet for them anymore.
They never respected you, Pete. They wanted your money. Deal wit’ it.
Even when wingnuts find a black person to like, they can’t seem to do it without being horrifically racist. It’s been fairly entertaining watching them fall all over themselves for Herman Cain [the GOP candidate who has never held elected office and who was genuinely befuddled when Chris Wallace asked him whether or not he supports the Palestinians' right of return. That is Palin-level ignorance right there.] simply because they are gleeful that maybe they have a black person too!!! Someone the other day — I can’t remember whom — pointed out that the Republican embrace of Cain probably has less to do with them being impressed with a black candidate, and more to do with them being impressed with themselves for liking a black candidate, because it allows them to go back to thinking they’re not racists.
Here’s Bryan Fischer of the hate group known as the American Family Association, commenting on the blackness of Herman Cain vis a vis President Obama’s blackness, and oh my god, just hold onto your chair:
He can’t talk enough about how white he is and how white his heritage is. And you compare that to, say, Herman Cain – you know, Herman Cain was just joking around about being the real Black man in the presidential race and President Obama kind of helping reinforce what Herman Cain has said in jest.
President Obama is half-white, and half-black; Herman Cain is all black; he’s authentically black; he is the real black man in the race.
So we’ll see how all of that plays out. I mean, President Obama celebrating his Irish heritage, I mean there is just something about that I just find, I just find that comical, frankly.
Okay, let me see if I can break Fischer’s argument down into its simplest parts:
1. Herman Cain is a REAL black man.
2. Obama talks too much about his white heritage to be a real black man.
3. Hahaha, how silly for Obama to talk about his Irish heritage, I mean, have you seen his skin?!?! No, President Obama, you are not one of us.
4. In summary, and in conclusion, Herman Cain is my favorite black ever. I mean, at least he spouts of the same garbage we do.
Am I interpreting Fischer correctly here? I think I am. Here’s Digby to elaborate a bit more:
Here’s the thing. Racist types always like the “good ones”, the ones who “know how to behave” and do all the right things. They always have. Unfortunately “most of them” aren’t “good ones.” (You know how “they” are.) Nothing racist about that at all.
Bingo! Herman Cain is okay because he’s one of the relatively small percentage of the black population which toes the wingnut line. Therefore he is one of the “good ones,” who, let’s stop pussyfooting around, “knows his place.” Meanwhile, Bryan Fischer has been, for the last couple of years, going completely apesh*t over whether Obama is “legitimate,” or a true American, because he’s simply not one of the “good ones.” Oh, and he has a funny name and Bryan is scared of anything that sounds Muslim.
Brought down to the level of the garden variety, non-media-savvy wingnut, it’s the same construction you hear from Southern Republicans all the time. If you’re from the South, you’ll recognize this wingnut argument construction:
You know I don’t have a racist bone in my body! I mean, we have black neighbors and they keep their yard BEAUTIFUL. But [insert heavily racist rant about the possibility of a poor black woman getting to see a doctor before they do].
It’s a strange delusion, but if Cain advances, we’re going to see it come into play over the next few months, big time.
I actually watched Glee last night. [Give me back my gay card.] I had seen it once before, and had enjoyed it, but I really don’t watch teevee very much, so I miss out on most of the Things I Should Be Watching. I was actually really impressed by how well they handle a variety of subjects, including the obvious existence of gay students in high school. Of course, no reality is the best reality for the Religious Right, so they’ve been whining about Glee ever since it debuted.
Last night, inspired by this week’s Glee, Fox’s Houston affiliate decided to debate the asinine question, “Is TV Too Gay?,” and in order that the debate be “fair and balanced,” they decided to bring none other than Bryan Fischer on to the program, the same Bryan Fischer who is almost single-handedly responsible for landing the American Family Association on the SPLC’s list of anti-gay hate groups. Fischer is just as extreme in his beliefs as the Westboro Baptist Church, but we can only surmise that his knees are too old to handle that sort of protest schedule. Fischer didn’t say anything new, because there’s no intellectual basis for his beliefs, and therefore no room for nuance or exploration. He just drooled some words about “glamorizing the homosexual lifestyle,” lied to the camera by suggesting that there is no such thing as safe gay sex, and threw out a few of his other greatest hits.
Luckily, Ray Hill, the gay activist on the other side, isn’t afraid to play the game and calls Fischer as a liar to his face. Enjoy:
My question, though, is this: what producer at Fox Houston made the absurd decision to bring on one of the world’s most unhinged anti-gay activists? Get with the program, sir or ma’am! You have The Googles at your disposal and you can easily find that Bryan Fischer lies as often as his mouth is open, and is motivated not only by anti-gay hatred, but by racism and all other sorts of bigotry. His views on Native Americans and black people come to mind. He is not “the other side” of the gay issue or any other issue. He is the moral equivalent of a head covered by a white sheet.
Next time, try to “do journalism” more responsibly.
The support for our petition for Apple to remove Exodus International’s inherently bigoted iPhone app has been overwhelming. As I hit “post” on this piece, the number of signers sits at 139,943. [If you haven't signed yet, do it!] We at Truth Wins Out are thrilled with the response, and we encourage Apple to listen.
However, there have been pieces and comments here and there which suggest that some people, even some ostensibly on our own side, don’t quite understand why we’re doing this, or why it’s important. Some of the complaints mention the First Amendment and/or censorship, neither of which are really appropriate critiques here. Other complaints suggest that, while those making them may indeed understand Apple’s policies against defamatory apps, they don’t quite understand the inherently hateful message of Exodus and similar groups, couched as it is in sugary, “loving” religious language.
So I wanted to take a few minutes to really break this down, and as my framework, I’ve decided to respond to a piece in Forbes by a writer named Victoria Pynchon, who I truly believe is completely well-meaning, but nonetheless doesn’t quite get it. Here is how Pynchon starts her piece:
I downloaded the Exodus App today to see whether it contained something akin to hate speech which has been variously defined as any communication which disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race or sexual orientation; or attacks or disparages a person or group of people based on their social or ethnic group.
At the risk of putting myself at the center of a firestorm of disapproval, I have to say that what I viewed and read on the Exodus app was not hate speech but simply the expression of religious beliefs with which I, and many other people, disagree.
Exodus International appears to be a non-denominational religious organization that believes homosexuality is a sin. It also promotes the idea that this sin can be relieved by establishing a spiritual relationship with Jesus.
Let us talk about “religious beliefs” for a moment. Many religious beliefs are uniformly harmful. The religious belief that black people should be the natural slaves of white people is/was harmful. We do have a First Amendment in this country which protects speech, protects against the establishment of a state religion, and at least endeavors to keep religious expression and the state separate. However, the free practice of religion doesn’t always extend any old place the religious want it to go. In short, your “religious freedom” ends the second it damages my constitutional freedoms.
Now, that was sort of an aside, because let us be clear that this issue has nothing to do with the First Amendment. No one is telling proponents of Exodus-style brainwashing that they cannot exercise their religious beliefs. However, Apple has a stated policy regarding their apps, which specifically excludes apps that are defamatory/hateful toward entire groups of people. Racist apps do not get in. Anti-Semitic apps do not get in. Perhaps some of the confusion, then, is in what precisely about Exodus and similar groups makes them inherently hateful, inherently bigoted, and inherently discriminatory against the entire LGBT community. Peterson Toscano, who is one of the most well-known survivors of the Exodus world, broke it down the other day in a piece where he quite simply labels Exodus-supporting groups as straight supremacists:
Why all the fuss? Why not let these folks have their freedom of speech even if what they have to say is wacky, antiquated, and panned by proper medical folks?
In the case of Exodus, here’s why we fuss. For one, we are NOT talking about a freedom of speech issue. Exodus is free to say whatever they want on their blogs and pulpits. No private company like Apple has to use their resources to promote Exodus’ message. Apple has the right to say, no.
Exodus spokespeople paint themselves in the media as kindly folks who simply want to help those who are unhappy with being gay. They don’t force anyone to do anything against their will. They do not want to interrupt the lives of happy homosexuals who are content with their sexuality or identity. That’s what they say, but that’s not what they mean. They are being wise as serpents and gentle as doves. They are duplicitous.
Exodus is a Straight Supremacist group that believes that heterosexuality, straight marriage, and gender normative behavior are superior to anything lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) people have going on in their lives. At Exodus conferences, in their books, through their many local programs they state that LGBTQ people are inferior to heterosexuals. They say over and over that LGBTQ folks are morally, spiritually, developmentally damaged. Just last week Alan wrote that even celibate gays who still identify as gay “fall short of God’s best.” In fact, he makes it clear that God’s best is for people to be heterosexually partnered, even if they are not heterosexual. They do not seem to consider the needs of a straight person who may well suffer as a result of this union (which is often the case.)
[...]
And what is Exodus’ big goal for 2011? To reach out to youth in middle school and high school with a message of hope! You don’t have to be bullied for being gay because you can chose the superior identity of being straight. They have a new iphone app in large part to reach out to the younger generation with their straight supremacist message. In essence they say, “The bullies are right. You are a worthless piece of shit, but we can bring value to your life. We can help you leave all that gayness behind and become holy and valuable to the world around you.”
You see, Ms. Pynchon, Exodus does not exist without an inherently defamatory framework which blames gay peoples’ problems on our sexuality, and which states that indeed we are worthy of hatred and scorn, and then makes money off promulgating the entirely false hope that one can leave all of these problems behind by denying our true selves and joining up with the Straight Supremacist cause. Imagine, then, a group which was based on the idea that any time a black person has problems, their skin color is the root of that problem, but if you spend several years and tens of thousands of dollars, you, too, can leave the African-American lifestyle and live as a Caucasian. It wouldn’t pass Apple’s policies, would it?
Now, there are racist websites and anti-Semitic websites and anti-gay websites all over the internet. No one is trying to “suppress” their rights to speak out. But Apple is a private corporation with a stated policy against defamatory and hateful apps. Facebook has similar policies. What we are doing here is simply asking Apple to abide by their own guidelines, and if that means it’s time for the Apple hierarchy to spend a moment getting educated on what Exodus International really does, so be it.
Apple had no problem deleting the bigoted Manhattan Declaration app, because the hate in that document was so in your face that a fool could see it. We understand that Exodus is far more serpent-like in the way they go about their business, but here is something important to understand: the entire ex-gay industry mostly serves as a tool to prop up the very same bigoted groups behind the Manhattan Declaration. Because there is an arm of the Religious Right claiming to love gays so much that they’ll help us find “freedom from homosexuality,” hate groups like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association are able to maintain a veneer [even if only in their own minds] of plausible deniability over whether they actually hate gay people. ”Of course we don’t hate gay people! We love them enough to try to free them from their sin!”
Later in her piece, Pynchon engages in what I see as a deep over-analysis of the subject, trying to suggest that somehow Apple products have become the arbiters of our “national narrative”:
There’s something deeper at work in the demand for the expulsion of Exodus from the App store than what might underlie calls for the boycott of an enterprise whose policies don’t meet with a certain group’s approval – Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE:ANF) and the HRC Index come to mind.
The furor over the Exodus App suggests that the iPad, by virtue of its shape and function, is assumed to be carrying our national “super story” – the tale a community tells about itself to establish a shared identity. As scholars explain, these national narratives hold us together and keep us apart.
[...]
When we demand that people be ejected from the public square based on the content of their speech, we’re usually doing so because we don’t want them to be telling any part of our communal story.
[...]
If the iPad and iPhone have become, by virtue of their information app-lization, a version of the public square, we’d be better off letting the public decide whose ideas are more consistent with our national character and whose are not.
No, Ms. Pynchon. It is not that complicated, at all. The Apple products are not The Public Square, and you’d be hard-pressed to point to a situation where gay activists are truly asking that Religious Right opinions be removed from The Public Square. Indeed, we spend our days highlighting and refuting their statements, thus giving their opinions more airtime on the internet [which IS the public square] than they’d ever have before.
This is very simple. Apple has a stated policy against discriminatory and defamatory apps, but unfortunately, as with so many sectors of our society, which have yet to catch up with the fact that anti-gay bigotry is no better than racism or anti-Semitism, they have failed to make the connection that this app goes against their policies just as a white supremacist app would. No one is trying to take away Exodus’s “Freedom of Speech.” We’re asking Apple to be consistent and treat their LGBT customers with the same dignity as they’d treat anyone else.
Frank Talk is the blog of Frank Neudecker, a city councilman in Jackson, Tennessee. As such, one would expect that, even if not everybody agrees with the content, he would maintain a level of discourse appropriate to civil society. Of course, as we all know, that’s a pretty low bar.
We don’t even necessarily expect politicians to use their social media outlets for important news and information. After all, Texas governor Rick Perry seems to use his Twitter mostly for the purpose of posting pictures of puppy dogs! It’s a whole different animal though [see what I did there?] when politicians instead allow people to post viciously ignorant, racist, homophobic vitriol and call it “commentary.” Forthwith, here are some choice words from “Linda Hunnicutt,” in a post titled “ROFLMAO.” Again, this is on the website of an elected official:
Take a good look at where all of this tolerance has gotten us.. it has given us years of Hillary Clinton, Barney Frank, Nancy and Harry and now dead Teddy. Lord how blessed these people have made us. Now we have a Muslim President who isn’t even a citizen and his following of little tolerant dingleberrys touting Tolerance oh yes we have to be so tolerant of this slug… this infiltrator, this Trojan horse’s ass and his ill mannered, ugly, in bred looking bride wearing her $600 blinking sneakers, oh what class this first lady brings to the white house. I bet Jackie Kennedy is rolling about in her grave.
Tolerance has given us a country where the white people are so brain damaged and cultured they tolerate being controled by the likes of people we laughed at as nutty a few years ago.. Remember the little fatty fuzzy haired kook Richard Simmons? Now he is a common fixture and so respected.. uck… Our schools, courts, everything is being taken over by the homosexuals who have been bred to make us all a UNISEX nation it seems. Years ago we tolerated these so called people as entertainers ( even then they weren’t really funny, just funny looking ) remember Liberace? Oh my goodness how wonderful he and his little brother were and how they honored their Mommy… The only thing I can say about him he was good at the piano but then what else could he possibly do? The only good thing about these freaks is they will not be reproducing. The problem is that is not stopping the growth of perverts and humans that don’t know which way to swing. They are in the schools where they are now the respected and revered teachers of our children teaching TOLERANCE….The TV, Movies and educational systems have made it more acceptable and attractive to become a homosexual than to be normal now in the schools, Kids are so easily led by the advertising media, music and in general icons of acceptance.
Time out. When is the last time you saw Richard Simmons on television? Does anyone else get the feeling this piece was written by Rip Van Wingnut, having just awakened from her years-long slumber, still trying to figure out which parts of her fever dreams actually happened?
In all the discussions about the European settlement of the New World, one feature has been conspicuously absent: the role that the superstition, savagery and sexual immorality of native Americans played in making them morally disqualified from sovereign control of American soil.
Bryan Fischer got up and said, “I’ve been writing about gays every day for a year, time to spend a little time writing about another group I hate: American Indians!”
International legal scholars have always recognized that sovereign control of land is legitimately transferred in at least three ways: settlement, purchase, and conquest. Europeans have to this day a legitimate claim on American soil for all three of those reasons.
Which is why Bryan supports immediately selling the Louisiana Purchase back to France!
They established permanent settlements on the land, moving gradually from east to west, while Indian tribes remained relentlessly nomadic.
The Trail of Tears never would have happened if those damn Injuns had just stayed still!
But another factor has rarely been discussed, and that is the moral factor.
In the ancient tradition of the Hebrews, God made it clear to Abraham that the land of Canaan was promised to his descendants. But he told Abraham the transfer of land to his heirs could not happen for 400 years, for one simple reason: “[T]he iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Gen. 15:16).
The Amorites, or Canaanite peoples, practiced one moral abomination after another, whether it was incest, adultery, sexual immorality, homosexuality, bestiality or child sacrifice, and God finally said “Enough!”
And the ancient tradition of the Hebrews is of ultimate relevance to modern day Alabammy, which was promised to white people in Europe via a text message from God. You can look it up.
The native American tribes at the time of the European settlement and founding of the United States were, virtually without exception, steeped in the basest forms of superstition, had been guilty of savagery in warfare for hundreds of years, and practiced the most debased forms of sexuality.
Bryan Fischer’s fundamentalist Christian superstition, of course, is better than the Native Americans’ superstition, and his ancestors’ warfare and genocide was The Good Kind, you see, because it reinforced Bryan’s prejudices.
The native American tribes ultimately resisted the appeal of Christian Europeans to leave behind their superstition and occult practices for the light of Christianity and civilization. They in the end resisted every attempt to “Christianize the Savages of the Wilderness,” to use George Washington’s phrase.
They rejected Washington’s direct counsel to the Delaware chiefs in 1779, “You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ.”
And when white people tell you there’s a better way, you damn well better listen!
Is this to say the same holds true for native American tribes today? In many respects, the answer is of course no. But in some senses, the answer is yes. Many of the tribal reservations today remain mired in poverty and alcoholism because many native Americans continue to cling to the darkness of indigenous superstition instead of coming into the light of Christianity and assimilating into Christian culture.
The continued presence of native American superstition was on full display at the memorial service for the victims of the Tucson shooter, when the “invocation” (such as it was) was offered by a native American who sought inspiration from the “Seven Directions,” including “Father Sky” and “Mother Earth,” rather than the God of the Bible.
Many of the fundamentalist churches today remain mired in self-righteous stupidity and a frayed tether to reality because many fundamentalist Christians continue to cling to the darkness of indigenous [to the Middle East] superstition instead of coming into the light of rational thinking and assimilating into modern culture. The continued presence of fundamentalist Christian superstition is on full display every time I open up my Google Reader and am regaled with tales of fundamentalist Christian belief being used to hurt and prey upon women, children, gay people, racial minorities, all under the guise of “family values.”
Sadly, this column will likely generate a firestorm of nuclear proportions among wingers on the left rather than the thoughtful reflection the thesis deserves.
If a bunch of intelligent people collectively saying “Gah, what a moron, and seemingly quite a racist too,” constitutes a “firestorm of nuclear proportions,” well then okay.
Even worse, the reaction will likely obscure the sobering lesson for today. America in 2011 is as guilty of “abominations” as the native American tribes we replaced. We have the blood of 53 million babies on our hands through abortion. We have normalized sexual immorality, adultery, and homosexuality, all horrors in the eyes of God, and are witnessing a surge in incest, pedophilia and even bestiality in our midst.
Is there a surge of incest, pedophilia and bestiality in Bryan Fischer’s midst? I’d like to stay away from his midst, then, thanks.
Thomas Jefferson wrote at the time of the Founding, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” It is long past time for us once again to tremble for our country.
And then Thomas Jefferson had a cupcake and flipped through his Jefferson Bible, which, if you remember, was a special version he created with all the supernatural aspects removed, leaving only the teachings of Jesus. Bryan Fischer would do well to read it.
The American Family Association has obviously at this point decided to embrace and move toward their status as a hate group. I suppose they had no other choice.
A bunch of bigots got together in the Deep South to rally in support of a girl and her pet anti-gay bigotry, and they were not welcomed!
KKK members and representatives from the Supreme White Alliance rallied at ASU in support of graduate student Jennifer Keeton, who filed suit against the school in July for requiring her to learn about the homosexual community or face expulsion.
[...]
Although the KKK said at least 50 members would arrive at 1 p.m. and rally until 4 p.m., the group of a dozen showed up about 1:40 p.m. and left about a 30 minutes later.
The dozens of counter-protesters from homosexual and civil rights organizations made use of their time face-to-face with Klan members.
“I think obviously those who came in support of equality and love outnumbered those who came in support of white supremacy,” said Christin Meador, an Augusta native who traveled from New York City to organize a protest against the KKK. She founded Proud Ally in 2009, a national gay-straight alliance that promotes tolerance and education.
Too bad, so sad.
Nice work, Augusta.
Later on that night, the Klan had one of their extremely fey ceremonies where they burned a cross and they chose a new Miss Congeniality Grand Wizard, and they promised they’d be coming back to Augusta State, due to the way the hundreds of counterprotesters there hurt their fee fees:
“We’re coming back to Augusta because of the disrespect given today,” Johnson said. “(Protesters) never gave us a chance to say what we had to say.”
Johnson said he ended the rally in front of ASU early because “people there tried to make it about hate, but it was about constitutional rights.”
Would it be completely unprofessional of me to just respond with a “LOL,” rather than commenting with words?
