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.
I'm curious what "facts" you're talking about because I've not seen you reference any facts whatsoever. I think you're confusing what's going through your mind with what you've posted on this thread.
WHAT FACTS?????
Here's what I suggest, try reading the links at post 270 and then view the replies from there.
If that overwhelms you, try just reading the links. You can see some additional facts in post 305. Freeper longtermmemmory provided some links in post 310.
Let me know when you're done reading the above as I have an additional 200+ links on the subject for your perusal. But, you're not interested in facts so I don't think you'll be asking me for the additional links, let alone read what I've already provided.
Western civilization is defined not by laissez-faire economics, but by the Judeo-Christian ethic, whih displaced the ethic of the warring pagan cultures of Europe and baptized them into a single Christian civilization. If the libertarian wing of the GOP suceeds in ousting or rendering irrelevant the socially conservative wing that champions the Western ethic, the American voter will be limited to a choice between two parties which both advocate a revived pagan ethic, the dismantling of the Judeo-Christian ethic, and with it the end of Western civilization as we have known it -- a Pyhrric victory.
I personally would rather suffer under a blatantly pagan Democratic regime than a crypto-pagan Republican administration -- the pagans on the left at least give it to you straight.
It's also odd that he would mention Gary Bauer, because I put David, Gary & Pat Buchannan in the same category..
IMO, their occasional flashes of brilliance are the exception, not the rule.
On the other hand, perhaps lumping them together like this is short changing Gary & Pat... Because I can honestly say that I like them.
Nevermind, I already know the answer to that one.
Yes, I think so also. When Gary is hitting on all 8 cylinders, he's quite the handful. He won't accept half truths like this at face vaule, and there's no reason for the rest of us to either.
Agreed. I have had quite enough "inclusiveness" and "multi-culturalism" for one lifetime and it's one of the big reasons why I am a Conservative.
If the GOP isn't content with a bird in the hand, they are liable to be left with nothing..
Welcome to the discussion. I appreciate your input, but it strays a bit from what I'm talking about. I'm talking about scripter's tendency to ping me on links to op-eds and opinionated analysis and call it "facts". I can't seem to enlighten him/her to the concept that one's opinion does not constitute a fact, something which he/she has yet to address, rebut, or acknowledge.
When I say destroy I don't mean "kill", I mean remove the essential thing that identifies. If a homosexual's whole identity is wrapped up in being a homosexual, then how can you disagree with him about homosexuality? Anyone who does not accept them and what they do, is an enemy. The same is true of all essential identifiers. I'm a Christian. If you pursuade me that Christianity is wrong, then I can no longer be a "Christian" - you will have destroyed my identity. If I'm truly a Christian, I can't peacefully disagree with people about the truth of Christianity. The best I can offer is an armistace because the stuggle for truth and justice is absolutely a war!!! People, especially children, are being destroyed all the time. Let me also say that a pervert unreformed is a threat to man and beast.
I see little objectionable in the document to which you linked in your post, but that statement of principles is focused on economic policies, not on social policies. For what it's worth, I would disagree that "limited government, individual freedom and personal responsibility" are the primary foci of Western civilization, which is centered upon the related but different concepts of fealty (to Cross and Crown), duty (to God, family, and liege) and solidarity with the common weal. The idea that "government has no money nor power not derived from the consent of the people" is an idea of the pagan/humanist "enlightenment", not of the Christian civilization from which it sprang; such thinking inevitably leads to contradictory ideas such as
While recognizing the harm that drug abuse causes society... [we hold that] per the tenth amendment to the U. S. Constitution, matters such as drugs should be handled at the state or personal level.Such a policy towards drug abuse would of course be the same as no policy at all; in such a society individuals would be free to do as they liked with themselves or their property, regardless of the effect of those actions upon the moral or physical environment around them. In a truly Western/Christian society, on the other hand, those private actions that tend towards the destruction of the common ethic of society (drug abuse, sodomy, bestiality, Satanism, etc.) or of those things held in common by society (the physical or esthetic environment, etc.) are justly forbidden by custom and (where necessary) by law. In an atomistic, libertarian society, every man is an island, reponsible to nothing but his own nerve endings; in a traditional Western sociiety, individuals are organically integrated into the society they inhabit, and responsible to their parents, social superiors, princes, the Church, and to God for their actions. The traditional Western view is that liberty consists in living by the natural law, but that no individual has a right to act as a corrupting agent within a society by transgressing that law. That way lies only chaos -- the ultimate negation of individual liberty.
The GOP must decide as a party whether it is going to represent the libertarian, humanistic, atomstic worldview of our modern world or the conservative, Judeo-Christian, communitarian viewpoint of our traditions. If the decision is in favor of libertarianism, then the U.S. political scene will become the province of two liberal parties -- one left-liberal big-government party, one right-liberal big-business party. Either way, conservatism will become a thing of the fringes.
Salon Newsreal | The mysteries of Bill Clinton "My only enemy is right-wing religious fundamentalism."
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