georgeob1 wrote:blatham wrote:bill
I detest the DNC and Kerry for their stand on gay marriage. That detestation is mitigated only by the fact that no other position is now possible for any candidate at the presidential level because of the homophobia that has been whipped up by the religious right and the Republican party who now depends completely upon placating this voting block.
I regognize that the "Religious Right" has become a standard whipping boy for such criticism. However, on what basis do you assert the opposition is necessarily based on homophobia? Does any opposition to the political agendas of GLBT groups constitute homophobia? Even Savonarola stopped short of characterizing all disagreement as sin.
Religious Right as victim. Too precious for words, that idea. And I'll get back to that shortly.
Earlier I said explicitly that opposition to homosexuality is NOT necessarily a function or consequence of religious ideas. Rather obviously it isn't, as many theists within Semitic and other faith traditions have no problem with homosexuality, and as many people of no faith react to homosexuality in negative ways. But the organized push against homosexuality in America is coming from the religious right, that is, the evangelical/baptist organizations and the Catholic church, mainly (within the Anglican community, it arises most virulently out of the African Anglican organizations - again, culture). It is not religion at the base of this, but religious groups are behind what we are speaking of on this thread, to achieve, for example, a Constitutional ammendment banning homosexual marriage. That's not the Plumbers of America nor the Rotarians.
I don't know GLBT, but I'll guess gay/lesbian are indicated in the first two letters. What possible agenda could they have? This is one of the most disgusting bits of scapegoating and derogatory myth in the picture here. Their agenda is justice and equality, as it was with blacks and women. That's it. Or I could be wrong and they are out to wrest world control away from Icky Jewish Bankers so they can then be free to indoctrinate children and rape the Pope for fun.
Now, if there are rational disagreements with homosexuality, or of granting homosexuals fully equal status under the law and more broadly as citizens in the community, then I have yet to find that rational disagreement. Harm to community? Harm to ideas or models of marriage and consequently to the well-being of the community? There's nothing here george. There is NO empirical data to suggest either of these might be so. What is flying around out there are the sorts of pseudo-science tracts that foxfyre digs up from her conservative press sources. It is as scientifically and logically tawdry as the Design Theory utterances. These folks cannot not believe. They don't have the courage for it. Such an odd coincidence that the very same folks who are uncomfortable with homosexuals being considered equal within the community are the same ones pushing Design Theory.
And that brings us to the Religious Right or Christians playing victim. There is pathos here, for sure, but it doesn't sit where they believe it does. In our case at hand, to argue that Christians or conservatives or Tau Cetians are being victimized because people like me inhibit them from labelling a class of humans (somewhat different from them) as inferior and excluding them from full community membership is farcical.
You're a good guy george, and I truly like and admire you. But in these areas, your brain takes shortcuts, sidling up to the protective cliches and avoiding the plague like uncomfortable randomness. Or vice versa.
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Have they no shame? 