Posted on 05/20/2003 8:14:33 AM PDT by theoverseer
In four Gospels - including the Sermon on the Mount - Jesus neglected to mention the subject of homosexuality. But that hasn’t stopped a handful of self-appointed leaders of the so-called Religious Right from deciding that it is an issue worth the presidency of the United States. In what the Washington Times described as a "stormy session" last week, the Rev. Lou Sheldon, Paul Weyrich, Gary Bauer and eight other "social conservatives" read the riot act to RNC chairman Marc Racicot for meeting with the "Human Rights Campaign," a group promoting legal protections for homosexuals. This indiscretion, they said, "could put Bush’s entire re-election campaign in jeopardy."
According to the Times’ report by Ralph Hallow, the RNC chairman defended himself by saying, "You people don’t want me to meet with other folks, but I meet with anybody and everybody." To this Gary Bauer retorted, "That can’t be true because you surely would not meet with the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan."
Nice analogy Gary. Way to love thy neighbor.
This demand to quarantine a political enemy might have had more credibility if the target – the Campaign for Human Rights -- were busily burning crosses on social conservatives’ lawns. But they aren’t. Moreover, the fact that it is, after all, crosses the Ku Klux Klan burns, might suggest a little more humility on the part of Christians addressing these issues. Just before the launching of the 2000 presidential campaign, George Bush himself was asked about similarly mean-spirited Republican attacks. His response was that politicians like him weren’t elected to pontificate about other people’s morals and that his own faith admonished him to take the beam out of his own eye before obsessing over the mote in someone else’s.
The real issue here is tolerance of differences in a pluralistic society. Tolerance is different from approval, but it is also different from stigmatizing and shunning those with whom we disagree.
I say this as someone who is well aware that Christians are themselves a persecuted community in liberal America, and as one who has stood up for the rights of Christians like Paul Weyrich and Gary Bauer to have their views, even when I have not agreed with some of their agendas. Not long ago, I went out on a public limb to defend Paul Weyrich when he was under attack by the Washington Post and other predictable sources for a remark he had made that was (reasonably) construed as anti-Semitic. I defended Weyrich because I have known him to be a decent man without malice towards Jews and I did not want to see him condemned for a careless remark. I defended him in order to protest the way in which we have become a less tolerant and more mean-spirited culture than we were.
I have this to say to Paul: A delegation to the chairman of the RNC to demand that he have no dialogue with the members of an organization for human rights is itself intolerant, and serves neither your ends nor ours. You told Racicot, "if the perception is out there that the party has accepted the homosexual agenda, the leaders of the pro-family community will be unable to help turn out the pro-family voters. It won’t matter what we say; people will leave in droves."
This is disingenuous, since you are a community leader and share the attitude you describe. In other words, what you are really saying is that if the mere perception is that the Republican Party has accepted the "homosexual agenda," you will tell your followers to defect with the disastrous consequences that may follow. As a fellow conservative, I do not understand how in good conscience you can do this. Are you prepared to have President Howard Dean or President John Kerry preside over our nation’s security? Do you think a liberal in the White House is going to advance the agendas of social conservatives? What can you be thinking?
In the second place, the very term "homosexual agenda," is an expression of intolerance as well. Since when do all homosexuals think alike? In fact, thirty percent of the gay population voted Republican in the last presidential election. This is a greater percentage than blacks, Hispanics or Jews. Were these homosexuals simply deluded into thinking that George Bush shared their agendas? Or do they perhaps have agendas that are as complex, diverse and separable from their sexuality as women, gun owners or Christians, for that matter?
In your confusion on these matters, you have fallen into the trap set for you by your enemies on the left. It is the left that insists its radical agendas are the agendas of blacks and women and gays. Are you ready to make this concession -- that the left speaks for these groups, for minorities and "the oppressed?" Isn’t it the heart of the conservative argument that liberalism (or, as I would call it, leftism) is bad doctrine for all humanity, not just white Christian males?
If the President’s party – or conservatism itself -- is to prevail in the political wars, it must address the concerns of all Americans and seek to win their hearts and minds. It is conservative values that forge our community and create our coalition, and neither you nor anyone else has - or should have - a monopoly in determining what those values are.
Whoa! Mid-Eighties flashback. Usually I refer to them as the Talibornagain.
Yep...that's the way it works it's called constitutional law.
Last chance...why isn't incest one of your "human rights"??? Why can't you answer?
What's that saying about "the hand that sews the jeans rules the world"?
No one is seeking to purge people who suffer from any disability, whether, perceptual, biological or moral, from any association or participation that is not directly related to or affected by their disability. It is true that there are Conservatives who are homosexuals, and there is no reason why we should reject their support. There is all the difference in the world between accepting and even courting the support of individuals and groups of every type and persuasion, and implicitly endorsing a particular group or persuasion.
Certainly people who have a problem, but will endorse the bulk of our agenda, should be treated with more than mere courtesy. They should be invited to support the bulk of our agenda. That is practical politics, and will offend almost no one but absolute fanatics. But for the Administration to act as though it seriously considers the idea that Homosexuality is an acceptable, alternative lifestyle is something very different. That is not about accepting & encouraging individuals to support your cause. That is embracing a proposition that runs counter to very basic Conservative social values--as well as to common sense, and every principal of natural law, consistent with common sense and historic human experience.
In brief, we are talking about the difference between morally consistent leadership, and the lowest brand of politics, where the politician seeks to be all things to all men.
Horowitz is very good when he bashes the Marxist influences in minority agitations. He understands certain species of the far Left, very well. But when he gets into this sort of argument, he appears out of his depth. His initial theological comments are just plain silly. The New Testament did not repeal the moral code of the Old, it merely tempered the severity of the punishments on the one hand, and offered an alternative path to Redemption on the other. It certainly did not make Homosexuality cease to be an "abomination," in the religious sense.
As a non-fundamentalist, I do not seek to persecute or punish the homosexual, in anyway, so long as the individual suffering from that disability/problem/ or whatever, respects the fact that his conduct is not acceptable to most other people, and will never be acceptable to most other people--outside a few centers where virtually anything is acceptable--and that he respects those other people's sensibilities. If an individual insists, instead, on an "in your face" effort to desensitize other people by flaunting offensive conduct, he deserves no sympathy.
The organizations that Conservatives find unacceptable as allies are not those which seek to help the maladjusted find ways to adjust to traditional society, or even ones that urge greater toleration or understanding for their situation. The objectionable organizations are those which to one degree or another, want to force others to accept conduct that is theologically considered an abomination, and which is certainly seen as aberrant in terms of natural law. In this objection, again, there is no desire to persecute any individual; merely, to make it clear, that fundamental morality and ancient cultural values are not things to be bartered away for mere votes at any election.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
OK, but then I really have to get some work done.
This may just be me, but I use "natural rights" narrowly to mean the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness granted by nature and nature's God, as stated in the Declaration of Independence. Americans have attempted to implement and guarantee those rights in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. If the Constitution does not accomplish this, then the remedy is amendment. If the government actually destroys these rights, then the remedy is insurrection, as stated in the Declaration.
I use human rights more broadly to mean the individual rights generally recognized by the civilized nations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights summarizes them pretty well. Some believe human rights derive from a social contract. I believe the source of these rights is also natural. These rights are enforced by a hodgpodge of international organizations, including the U.N. If a government destroys these rights, as Iraq, the only effective remedy IMHO is insurrection or intervention.
I don't believe the government has become destructive of our natural or human rights in nearly the proportion to justify insurrection. Like many on this board I am concerned about the erosion of Constitutional rights, but I believe the remedy is electing politicians who will appoint judges who will interprete the Constitution as written and originally intended.
Freegards.
No, the Constitution statutorily protects my inherent, God given rights. It is not the instrument that conveys rights to me.
And I see you're changing your tune now. You're no longer saying our rights are granted by the Constitution.
There is a word for that and it's been around longer than "gay." Even they have terms for various interactions with human waste such as "mud rolling." Why would that be a surprise when the primary focus is on the waste production portal?
Yes. No. This was addressed in my previous post to which you are replying. The state has an obligation to insure that its laws respecting marriage correspond to the natural law. To the extent that they don't, there will be reprecussion upon society. Marriage is for the purpose of reproduction. Laws can prohibit behaviors which interfere with that purpose, but they become invalid when the laws themselves violate the purpose.
I did read the book and I'm afraid you're the one who's being disingenuous and/or disagreeable. The book summary was written by someone who is obviously as vituperatively opposed to treating gays with any kind of dignity as you are. Her summations are, how to say it, a bit propagandistic.
Show me where in the constitution animals need to give consent…Hehehe. You're being ridiculous, do they need to give consent to be food too??? Bwahahaha…Animals are property, should we regulate your blow-up doll too?
Not an expert on incest. I saw an argument on another thread that it is children who are being protected in laws against incest because of the stats on birth defects etc.
Then we should regulate sexual acts for those with downs, cleft palate, spina biffita, club foot…et al since the CDC says their 95% likely to pass on their genetic defect too? Right... or are you a hypocrite? Same-sex incest is OK then??? Or are you a hypocrite there too?
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