Tuesday, November 11, 2008
A World Where Even Love Needs Defense
I apologize for this rant, but I am posting it nonetheless because I am angry and disgusted. Please excuse my use of profanity on this blog which seeks something better:
Proposition 8 passed. A moment of disgust and disgrace. I heard with my own ears in Indiana preachers, reverends or other religious leaders actively and treasonously discouraging their congregations from the polls. "Pray, don't vote, it will do a lot more good anyway," they'd say. In California, the divine message was different. Millions of dollars were spent to ensure hatred and discrimination were enacted by the god-fearing crowd.
I'm not exactly sure at what moment organized religion included hate as a theological platform. I'm not sure when religious institutions transitioned from hate between one religious group and another to hatred of society itself. I'm not sure when religion transitioned into a platform for actively removing existing rights from free citizens of a secular nation.
Alas, what I am sure of is that the Church of Latter Day Saints is a hate group mongering hate speech and that its members actively fund campaigns to remove existing rights from free citizens of a secular nation. Few things are more despicable. They have no defense.
They are not alone. The very day after hosting the kummbayah, let's all hold hands and seek redemption presidential 'debate,' Orange County's Saddleback Church, led by Rick Warren (the 'happy preacher') began actively organizing and funding a rights removal campaign. Fuck them! If church's and other religious groups want to maintain their coveted tax-free status, then they should stay the hell out of political organizing.
This concept was simple enough for the hesitant deists of the 18th century who founded this nation to understand and codify. If you want to believe in hocus-pocus, so be it. The government of this nation is a secular one built upon carefully constructed concepts of the Enlightment towards pragmatic governance designed to maximize the delicate balance between liberty and tyranny towards liberty and will not establish any official religion. Read that? Pragmatic! Liberty! Hocus-pocus is not pragmatic. Religion may be many things, but it is most certainly not pragmatic. Hocus-pocus has never been about liberty. Hocus-pocus has been at odds with liberty from its creation. If you don't believe me, read Leviticus.
So, we come to this message for the purveyors and customers of hocus-pocus: Get the fuck out of our government and keep your filthy child-raping, bigoted, hate-spewing hands off of everyone else's lives.
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Xenophobia is deeply embedded in American culture. The same people who contributed substantially to Obama's victory --Latinos and blacks-- in California were responsible for the passage of Prop. 8. You see, they perceived Obama to be like themselves; homosexuals are not.
ReplyDeleteIt will be important to remember this in the next few years. The people who voted for Obama were not better people than those who voted for McCain. They were very much like them; they just had slightly various views of themselves, and so of the candidates. Remember that speech Obama made, urging voters in California to reject Prop. 8?
Neither do I.
Blame religion if you want; I think it's just a convenient excuse. Those good Catholics don't have much trouble avoiding 18-child families, do they, even though contraception is a sin? So don't mislead yourself into finding such a scapegoat in an institution you already disdain: that's too easy. I have little truck with religion, myself; but I don't believe it is responsible for all the world's ills (maybe just most).
Your final message is not one that is likely to find much resonance. "Our" government is everyone's government, and either you accept democracy or you don't. I am sure you realize that, the apparent Talibanization of the U.S. notwithstanding, the supporters of Prop 8 are fighting a rear-guard action that is ultimately doomed to failure.
I personally believe that President Lincoln did our country a huge disservice by waging the Civil War; but it's over and done with, and we Hutus have to live with the Tutsis and everyone else who we happen to find within our borders (and I am opposed to political litmus tests for immigration).
So we'd do better to find ways to reach out to those we disagree with --I seem to remember some guy seeking office recently who said something like that. The alternative is available in many countries around the world, and it leads to chaos, madness, and death.
Although I empathize, understand, and in significant regards, agree, with your points, the fact of the matter is that the LDS provided 40% of all of the funds in the "Yes on 8" political movement and the vast majority of all the human capital, knocking on doors and staffing their 'campaign.'
ReplyDeleteit is incredibly disturbing, abominable, and truly sad that prop 8 passed. Nov 4th was bittersweet in many ways, as we won the presidency and the anti-abortion laws were stunted and the right to gay marriage took a step backward. Nonetheless, I agree with Tony that blaming it all on religion - religion as an all-encompassing, generalized entity - is shortsighted. i truly do not understand this generalization of religion; LDS is not Religion-it is only one of millions. I would go so far as to say that this type of generalizations mirrors the generalization of any community, faggots included.
ReplyDeleteRecall that it is democracy that got us into this - the people have voted. Nonetheless, I have utmost faith that equal rights will prevail. Two steps forward (Obama, pro-choice rights) and one step back (prop 8) is still one step forward.
The point I was making, certainly a less than eloquent one, is that political operations within a democratic republic do not happen magically.
ReplyDeleteThe Obama campaign required nearly a billion dollars, thousands of staffers, tens of thousands (or more) volunteers, and 20+ months of organizing, millions of supporters and tens of millions of voters. Abortion rights have taken even longer.
Prop 8 was invented, organized, and passed as per the result of heavy involvement by religious organizations. Let us not forget that it was the California Campaign for Families, Alliance Defense Fund, and Advocates for Faith and Freedom who collectively fought the court battles that led to Prop 8 being on the ballot in the first place. Each of these organizations are heavily funded by and two of three explicitly list in their statement of purpose, Christianity. LDS was mentioned not because it was alone, but because it was at the forefront of the effort.
Religious institutions of nearly all stripes (perhaps Unitarians excluded) have been combating LGBT liberty for a very long time. Trying to understand what organizations have the man-power, money, and necessary bigotry to put forth such an effort leaves me coming up empty. As such, it is perfectly reasonable to place religious organizations and the LDS in the forefront for their efforts against liberty. Certainly, the Obama campaign did not help, as their decided and intentional stance of omission is nearly as sad as the LDS, Focus on the Family, the National Evangelical Union, the Catholic church and others' acts of commission, but let us be fair and reasonable at laying blame where the blame lays.
I mourn the passage of proposition 8.
ReplyDeleteI mourn the loss of civil rights.
I mourn mockery of the 14th amendment and all who died to revolutionize our country.
I mourn bigotry and back-turning ignorance.
I mourn the irony and tragedy of African Americans voters who, side by side, supported Obama and this proposition.
I mourn the pain and anger which California’s LGBT must feel.
I mourn the fall of my own optimism.
The Prop 8 - Black myth must end. Read here: fivethirtyeight
ReplyDeleteObama spent almost a billion bucks influencing the demos. The LDS spent a large wad doing the same. Jumco celebrates the former as a triumph of democracy; he loathes the latter as a subversion of it. Let's not forget that the city both created and murdered Socrates. It is an old and timely lesson.
ReplyDeleteThe difference, Pericles, is that the LDS did so explicitly looking to REDUCE liberty.
ReplyDelete"WASHINGTON—In a landmark decision Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly ruled to uphold the Bill of Rights, the very tenets upon which American society is based. "After carefully considering the relevance of the 10 inviolable rights that comprise the ideological foundation on which our nation is built, the court finds that these basic freedoms remain important for the time being, and should not be overturned," read the majority opinion authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who cast the tie-breaking vote. "Until such time as it can be definitively proven that citizens no longer require the protections provided by the Bill of Rights, it shall remain the principal legal guidance for the United States of America." The Supreme Court's latest decision comes on the heels of last month's 6-3 ruling to abolish the pursuit of happiness from the three inalienable rights guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/supreme_court_upholds_bill?utm_source=onion_rss_daily
You don't say? NYT: "As proponents of same-sex marriage across the country planned protests on Saturday against the ban, interviews with the main forces behind the ballot measure showed how close its backers believe it came to defeat — and the extraordinary role Mormons played in helping to pass it with money, institutional support and dedicated volunteers."
ReplyDelete