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.
These are views I've held quite a long time, so no I'm not changing my tune. In my view the Constitution is the mechanism Americans have chosen to protect our natural rights. In practice there isn't much difference between the Constitution granting rights and the Constitution protecting natural rights. The biggest example I can think of when the distinction was important was when the Constitution permitted slavery, which is a violation of the slaves' natural rights.
BTW, I'm very much in the minority. Most Americans, including most SCOTUS justices, view the Constitution as a social contract that is the source of our rights, rejecting the theory of natural rights.
I just wish they'd stick to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer chatrooms with the other pre-teens, and not interrupt adult conversations. Don't you?
Self-absorbed, self-important, vain, arrogant, proud. Seems like I've seen a list like that somewhere before.
I absolutely did not. You took one thing I said in reference to the health costs of homosexuality vs. smoking or obesity and turned into a behavioral analogy. Either you don't know the difference or you're being deliberately deceitful.
You have ignored examples of groups like Glsen and Glad directly ecouraging teenagers to experince homosexual sex.
I have never said, nor implied that it's appropriate for Glsen to encourage teenagers to experiment homosexually (if in fact that's what they're doing). It is not.
Where I have a problem is when people like you want to point to some extreme misbehavior and extrapolate that because of that misbehavior we need to curtail the rights of everyone who falls into a very broad category similar to those who are misbehaving.
This doesn't seem to register with you unless it's the anti-gun lobby who tries to argue that all guns should be banned anytime some looney nut shoots up a school. It's the same misapplied logic.
Is there no end to your obfuscation and misdirection? Tell me, does the link accurately represent what was said in the book, yes or no. Is there anything out of context, yes or no? You'll probably respond with more obfuscation. But whatever it takes, the ends justify the means in your case.
It is about time that multiculturism is not tolerated and if we need to be tough about, so be it. Not such a great thing protesting how mean spirited the culture has become, especially when every parasitic and infected 3rd world peon comes to this country so that taxpayers can fund his life.
I can't say for sure, I haven't read the book. Have you? But call me crazy, something about the vocabulary of her summary leads me to believe that she's sensationalizing the book a bit.
Why are you preaching at me as if I'd argued otherwise?
I do not want to seem overly critical of the many other posted replies, but some of them are all over the map; and I think that before we let this issue completely fragment us, we try to more narrowly define just what the point is.
I thought the "social contract" types would have been jolted by the rise of Hitler to power, WWII and the Holocaust, done by proper procedure or agreement of the people, but grossly violative of the natural rights of millions. The only principled way to critique that regime was from a natural rights point of view.
No parent wants their child to grow up to be a homosexual.Personally, I've met plenty of parents who don't care. "Whatever makes them happy." The heart of the problem is a conflation of "happiness" and "pleasure." And sometime between the Declaration of Independence and today, we've lost the common language necessary to debate the issue rationally, as this thread demonstrates.
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