Posted on 09/02/2004 9:42:41 AM PDT by Grig
MUCH HAS BEEN made of the Republican National Committee’s decision to showcase the moderate wing of the party from the stage at Madison Square Garden this week. Hence speeches by Senator John McCain and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani on Monday night, and by California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday. And no invocation by Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, or Pat Robertson. The president, understandably, wants to avoid a Pat Buchanan–esque moment of the sort that marred his father’s convention in 1992. (Buchanan’s prime-time rant about the "culture war" was so extreme that Molly Ivins quipped it was better in the original German.) Yet very little attention has been paid to the fact that the invocation on Monday was given by a woman who this past February compared those who support the rights of lesbian and gay couples to marry with those who supported Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.
Sheri Dew, who is the CEO of the Deseret Book Company and a Mormon activist, was invited to give the invocation by the RNC. She told Utah’s Deseret Morning News this week that she had "no idea" how the Republicans found her and that she received a call from the committee "out of the blue." But the right-wing Dew, who is also the author of religious inspirational books like No Doubt About It, is well known in reactionary circles. Last February 28, Dew delivered a speech to an interfaith conference on marriage sponsored by the Family Action Council International, a Virginia-based nonprofit that advocates for the "family as the fundamental unit of society."
In that speech, which was published by Meridian, an online magazine devoted to topics of interest to the Mormon community, Dew made the same-sex-marriage rights/Nazi sympathizer analogy. After making the comparison (you can read her whole speech online at www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/040310defendersprint.html), she noted: "At first it may seem a bit extreme to imply a comparison between the atrocities of Hitler and what is happening in terms of contemporary threats against the family — but maybe not."
Maybe not? Dew made her comparison between gay-rights activists and Nazis deliberately and carefully. What does it say about the state of our nation that this woman was invited to give the opening prayer at the Republican National Convention? (During which she prayed for the "wisdom to protect and defend all families" — code for "legal authority to attack and dismantle lesbian and gay families.") What does it say about the state of our national conversation that those who drive the debate — Washington, DC–based pundits and politicos — don’t think this is worthy of comment, much less condemnation? And what does it say about politics today that everyone would rather debate what happened in the Mekong Delta 30 years ago (see "The Crooked Cowboy," Editorial, August 27) than call the Republicans on their strategy to lure radicals to the polls by embracing a campaign of hate toward people like the vice-president’s daughter?
Dew, of course, wasn’t the only right-winger invited to grace the stage of the "moderate" RNC confab. Grammy-winning gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, who during an interview with Charisma magazine described homosexuality as a curse caused by "neglect, abuse, and molestation," is scheduled to perform for the delegates on Thursday. Bishop Keith Butler, founder of the Word of Faith International Christian Center, in Michigan, and a virulent opponent of the rights of same-sex couples to marry, was also scheduled to address delegates on Thursday. And Senator Rick Santorum, who has compared homosexuality with bestiality, was scheduled to address delegates on Wednesday. These are not moderates. They are extremists. For the press to portray the RNC as a moderate affair is simply inaccurate and misleading. Indeed, McCain, Giuliani, and Schwarzenegger are moderate fig leaves for an extremist party.
We are living in dangerous times. The mainstream press is all too willing to investigate the baseless, scurrilous charges of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which lends dignity to Republican lies and distortions. From the moment the first Swift Boat charge was lobbed, the media should have noted the connections between Bush aide Karl Rove and the Swift Boat group’s backers, and noted that this was the third time Bush and/or his supporters have smeared a Vietnam veteran during a campaign. The first time was with McCain during the 2000 Republican presidential primary; the second was in 2002, during Max Cleland’s unsuccessful bid for re-election to the Senate; and now it’s happening with John Kerry. Meanwhile, the media take at face value the notion that the GOP has presented a compassionate, moderate slate of speakers at this year’s convention, despite the presence of speakers like Dew.
It’s no wonder the president was able to get away with lying to bring to the country to war. It’s no wonder that GOP radicals have been able to pass tax cut after tax cut after tax cut to the near-exclusive benefit of the wealthiest two percent of the country (thus triggering ruinous budget deficits). It’s no wonder that social policy in this country has been reduced to denouncing gay men and lesbians as the root cause of all that ails us. And it’s no wonder that Bush stands poised to steal another election thanks to our failure to enact meaningful voting reform in the wake of the 2000 Florida debacle (see "Revisiting the Scene of the Crime," News and Features, August 27).
There is only one way to end this disgrace: vote. You have until 20 days before the November 2 presidential election to register to vote. Visit www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/eleifv/howreg.htm for information on how to register if you haven’t already. More than at any other time in recent history, this election matters.
What do you think? Send an e-mail to letters@phx.com
My letter to the editor on this:
It may interest the editorial board of the Boston Phoenix to know that opposition to same sex marriage is not the hallmark of a 'right-wing reactionary'. Defenders and opponents of the traditional definition of family can be found in both parties.
Your attempt to imply that Sheri Dew compared gay activists to Nazi's is disingenuous in the extreme. Here is the full quotation:
This escalating situation reminds me of a statement of a World War II journalist by the name of Dorothy Thompson who wrote for the Saturday Evening Post in Europe during the pre-World War II years when Hitler was building up his armies and starting to take ground. In an address she delivered in Toronto in 1941 she said this: “Before this epic is over, every living human being will have chosen. Every living human being will have lined up with Hitler or against him. Every living human being either will have opposed this onslaught or supported it, for if he tries to make no choice that in itself will be a choice. If he takes no side, he is on Hitler’s side. If he does not act, that is an act—for Hitler.” May I take the liberty of reading this statement again and changing just a few words, applying it to what I fear we face today? “Before this era is over, every living human being will have chosen. Every living human being will have lined up in support of the family or against it. Every living human being will have either opposed the onslaught against the family or supported it, for if he tries to make no choice that in itself will be a choice. If we do not act in behalf of the family, that is itself an act of opposition to the family.”
Does the Phoenix disagree that those who take no side on this issue give tacit approval to same sex marriage, or do you just feel compelled to propagandize against anyone who dares to disagree with your position? If the latter, I can think of another WWII comparison that could be made.
Hey!
How come they got a copy of the VRWC code book and I didn't?
The MSM has averted their eyes, Missy.
But the Swiftees don't need no steenking mainstream media.
They have the Internet.
The relevance of anything the authors might have to say went out the window with this comment, which shows them to be followers of Uncle Karl.
"The Phoenix" has been a counter-culture rag since the days of the Vietnam War.
It is astonishing that the folks who crank out such garbage never, ever grow up. To them it matters only what you think - not what you do. To them, talk is always precious and action is always cheap.
I am surprised that the old Phoenix is still around. Oh yeah, that's right, Kennedy and Kerry are the senators from the old Bay State. How silly of me.
You mean they INVESTIGATED the charges???? Darn, I missed that!
The president, understandably, wants to avoid a Pat Buchanan–esque moment of the sort that marred his father’s convention in 1992. (Buchanan’s prime-time rant about the "culture war" was so extreme that Molly Ivins quipped it was better in the original German.) Yet very little attention has been paid to the fact that the invocation on Monday was given by a woman who this past February compared those who support the rights of lesbian and gay couples to marry with those who supported Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.
So to liberals it is alright to compare Pat Buchanan to Hitler but not the homosexual agenda to Nazism?
It is a sure sign of their desperation that the liberals are finding it necessary to defensively pick apart every detail of everything the Republicans are doing.
First, read post #1 again, second, get your facts straight.
Does the Boston Feces still have all of those sex ads?
I think that it may be short sighted. The Homosexual Agenda is the battering ram for the entire "Sex Positive Agenda" (which opposes abstinence at any age as unhealthy because it means suppressing sexual desires) and ALL of this is but a single aspect of the Politically Correct Leftist Agenda.
It was certainly taken out of context, but for someone who has been in the public eye, and doing public speaking, as long as Sheri Dew has, the fact that she said this at all does not reflect well on her. No one is trying to herd traditional families into death camps and gas chambers. And that sort of inflammatory rhetoric is not at all typical of what LDS Church leaders say or endorse. Bet they've told her not to say anything like that again. And I bet she won't.
Somebody really should have checked out her publicly recorded history more thoroughly, before signing her up to take the stage at the convention. When this sort of thing comes to light, it is bound to be circulated in out-of-context form, and serves to discredit both the LDS Church and the Republican Party. Mormons are an important voting block, and needed to be represented at the convention, but it wouldn't have been hard to find another one whose record didn't include this sort of garbage. The Mormons I know wouldn't dream of making an inflammatory and insensitive comment like that. Can you imagine Orrin Hatch saying something like that? Or any of the post-WWII Church Presidents?
I see nothing imflametory about it at all. All she said was that if you are passive about the issue, it helps those in favor of gay marriage.
No, that's not all she said. If that was all she'd said, this Boston Phoenix article would never have been written. Invoking the Holocaust, and comparing it to whatever issue one is speaking about at the moment, is inflammatory, unlike you are speaking of something genuinely comparable, such as Pol Pot's slaughter of half the population of Cambodia.
The intent of the remark was clearly limited in scope to the for-it-or-against-it nature of both issues. Even if you extend it to meaning that opposing same sex marriage is as important as opposing Hitler it isn't offensive.
Someone who takes it as meaning gay activists are brownshirts is just looking for something to feel offended about IMHO. Just because the BP wrote it doesn't mean they had a valid reason for writing it. They clearly have an agenda hostile to the RNC and I don't doubt that has more to do with the article than the actual words SD used.
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