So what have you got for me today, NY Times, from our nation’s best pundits on the situation in Indiana?
David Brooks, you say?
Like a purty girl dancin’ to Both Sides music, and a mess of Mom’s Bobo, mess of Mom’s Bobo, mess of Mom’s Bobo-cue.
If the opponents of that law were arguing that the Indiana statute tightens the federal standards a notch too far, that would be compelling. But that’s not the argument the opponents are making.
Instead, the argument seems to be that the federal act’s concrete case-by-case approach is wrong. The opponents seem to be saying there is no valid tension between religious pluralism and equality. Claims of religious liberty are covers for anti-gay bigotry.
This deviation seems unwise both as a matter of pragmatics and as a matter of principle. In the first place, if there is no attempt to balance religious liberty and civil rights, the cause of gay rights will be associated with coercion, not liberation. Some people have lost their jobs for expressing opposition to gay marriage. There are too many stories like the Oregon bakery that may have to pay a $150,000 fine because it preferred not to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex ceremony. A movement that stands for tolerance does not want to be on the side of a government that compels a photographer who is an evangelical Christian to shoot a same-sex wedding that he would rather avoid.
Furthermore, the evangelical movement is evolving. Many young evangelicals understand that their faith should not be defined by this issue. If orthodox Christians are suddenly written out of polite society as modern-day Bull Connors, this would only halt progress, polarize the debate and lead to a bloody war of all against all.
As a matter of principle, it is simply the case that religious liberty is a value deserving our deepest respect, even in cases where it leads to disagreements as fundamental as the definition of marriage.
Morality is a politeness of the soul. Deep politeness means we make accommodations. Certain basic truths are inalienable. Discrimination is always wrong. In cases of actual bigotry, the hammer comes down. But as neighbors in a pluralistic society we try to turn philosophic clashes (about right and wrong) into neighborly problems in which different people are given space to have different lanes to lead lives. In cases where people with different values disagree, we seek a creative accommodation.
Because of course the history of various civil rights movements in America is filled with “neighborly problems” solved with “creative accommodations” like fire hoses, billy clubs, dogs, armed National Guardsmen firing into crowds of students, firebombings, lynchings, and assassinations.
At no point is anyone trying to “write Orthodox Christians out of history” here, but it’s a nice little fantasy necessary for justification of “Hey you know what, gay people? You should probably be nicer to Republicans making laws to be used against you, and they would probably stop it, just like Malcolm X played a friendly game of Parcheesi with the Dixiecrats to end Jim Crow in the South.”
I mean come on, history is replete, if not goddamn gravid with examples of the ruling class happily giving rights to oppressed minorities when asked really nicely. You guys, people have lost their jobs being mean to gay people. When will the madness end?
Puppies and rainbows can live in harmony and crap before it turns into a bloody war or something. Suck it up and accept some structural discrimination for a while and eventually it’ll stop, because it’s hard being a white Christian guy in a state like Indiana, you know.
Just get you some of that there respectability politics and a mess of Mom’s Bobo-cue.
Baud
We don’t?
MattF
Oh, boy. I just read that essay– a painful experience because Brooks spends the first two-thirds making sure he can’t be accused of being a bigot. And it’s all so simple for David– those pesky LGBTs just need to be polite. What’s so hard about that?
boatboy_srq
Note that Brooks does not capitalize the O in his discussion of “orthodox Christians.” This is a major tell. He’s not talking about Orthodoxy; he’s talking about Xtians, and their little fantasy world where they’re the only ones Saved from Eternal Damnation by their sheer existence and Tasked With Saving Humanity (or at least as much of it as will Accept Vengeful Gun-Totin’ Capitalist Jeebus). Brooks in his missive has no interest in distinguishing sects of Christianity, or he’d have been more careful with his uppercase/lowercase usage. Instead he’s trying to be polite about the FundiEvangelical set that, if given the chance, would run roughshod over his “politeness of the soul” if that was what it took to achieve their Xtian Ahmurrca.
Jerzy Russian
@Baud: Also, too, we are forcing that photographer to take the photographs for free, so that sounds like slavery or something even worse.
Mr. Brooks sounds like 45.45 kg of stupid in a 22.73 kg sack (updated to comply with the metric system).
Baud
Is there a single example of Brooks arguing that the right needs to voluntarily refrain from aggressively pursuing their worldview to avoid these types of problems?
It’s another example of the Deficit Syndrome — it’s only a problem when Democrats/liberals do it.
Baud
@Jerzy Russian:
Communist!
Svensker
@boatboy_srq:
No, I think he doesn’t want to be accused of targeting the Eastern Church, i.e. Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox Christian Church, etc., which is what Capital O “Orthodox Christians” means.
Belafon
@Baud: That falls back to what I kept seeing over the weekend: How can you claim to be tolerant if you won’t tolerate my intolerance?
beltane
@boatboy_srq: Brooks may be only dimmly aware of the existence of Orthodox Christians. He seems to be relying on his own personal frame of reference by placing all Christians on a spectrum of adherence to religious law: reform Christians on one end, orthodox Christians on another. The provincialism of the NYT can be jarring for anyone who grew up in NYC and then moved away to RealAmerica.
Belafon
@MattF:
I believe he’s gone through blacks, women, and now LGBTs. What’s next?
Baud
@Belafon:
Poors.
beltane
@Svensker: That is the point Boatboy is making.
Baud
“We’re fighting a culture war for the soul of America!”
“Wait, we’re losing now”
“How about some tolerance, people?”
satby
@Belafon: Oh yeah. And we’re the haters that keep bringing up race and gays and stuff, just to cause trouble.
I actually got called that this weekend, along with a demand that I be GRATEFUL TO LIVE IN THIS COUNTRY!
Yes, with the caps. No, I won’t miss those folks from my life, though of course I’m being shunned more in sorrow than in anger, because they’re good Xtians.
Bobbo
Morality is a politeness of the soul, like that time when we told you to stop being gay or you will go to hell
beltane
David Brook’s son is serving in the military of a foreign country with his father’s encouragement and blessing. Perhaps Brooks regards all Americans as being kind of icky so who cares if they discriminate against each other.
boatboy_srq
@Svensker: Possibly. But the effect is still lending legitimacy to a subset of Christendom that (IYAM) has no business being accepted into that community as anything other than Remedial Christians In Dire Need Of Therapy.
MattF
@Bobbo: That wasn’t rude, though. Just helpfully informational.
beltane
@boatboy_srq: The kindest interpretation of Brook’s language is that he was trying to avoid the more accurate term “Fundamentalist Christian”, by using the somewhat perplexing small “o” orthodox Christian, a term that does not mean what he thinks it means in the context of Christianity.
Punchy
Um….no there’s not. There’s absolutely not “too many stories”. This is why the SAME DAMN “OREGON BAKERY” story is the ONLY ONE continuously quoted, mentioned, and cited as a reason for these laws.
His House of Straw will not go unchallenged.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Worse than that, EUROPEAN!!!
Comrade Dread
There is tolerance and there is equality under the law. Open the doors to discrimination and you open the doors to people being told by communities that ‘we don’t serve their kind here’.
Should a Catholic hospital be able to refuse visitation rights to a gay person’s spouse on the grounds that they don’t believe in the marriage?
For that matter, should a devout fundamentalist doctor be able to refuse treatment to a gay person?
Should we really compel women to leave town and drive to the next town because the local religious pharmacist refuses to dispense contraceptives?
How about asking the evangelical photographer to be polite and go to the big gay wedding, smile, do his job, talk to some folks at the reception, and collect his paycheck. After all, as I recall, Jesus got slammed for religious folks for hanging out with people they considered societal outcasts and ‘sinners’ and telling them that God loved them too. And He wasn’t even being offered money to be there.
boatboy_srq
@beltane: Actually, the point I was making is that Brooks is conferring legitimacy on a subset of “Christians” whose faith is about as un-Christian as one can get while still displaying the symbols. That to me is far more dangerous.
ThresherK
@Belafon: Well, one late April I got a gov’t agency to get off their asses and sweep the sand off a protected pedestrian/bicycle path by claiming (anonymously, lyingly) to have trouble navigating it in my motorized wheelchair.
Somehow I can imagine Bobo scolding a real person in a moto wheelchair doing the same thing.
(And no, I’m not ashamed of what I did.)
(The path didn’t need to be sanded for snow. All the sand was deposited on it by snowplows plowing the adjacent barriered highway.)
mikej
@beltane:
beltane
@boatboy_srq: Don’t underestimate Brook’s ignorance of the matter. He has his perspective from his own little bubble, and this perspective should make his opinion on the matter irrelevant.
GregB
Yes, here in NH, the polite moralizers are giving fourth graders a blow by blow description of how to cut up a fetus on the floor of the NH Statehouse.
boatboy_srq
@beltane: I disagree. By attempting political correctness, Brooks is applying an “orthodoxy”, or primacy, to the Fundies, which anyone affiliated with any other Christian sect would reject immediately as inappropriate (at best, if not actually heretical). In trying to avoid offending people or using potentially unpleasant language he’s said something far uglier, and done far more damage to his position. He’s escaped offending either the Orthodox or the Fundies directly by offending anyone professing a flavor of Christianity older than SBC or LDS.
beltane
@GregB: Great, now they’re going to want to try it out at home.
boatboy_srq
@beltane: That sounds like a good reason for about a million letters to the NYT editors’ desk complaining that Brooks doesn’t know his a## from a hole in the ground on this subject and has offended about 9000% more people than he thought he was placating. (I for one am seriously p!ssed.)
Patrick
Isn’t there a section in the bible where Jesus helps a prostitute? So, if Jesus works with prostitutes, why can’t this evangelical Christian work at a same-sex wedding?
beltane
@boatboy_srq: Sorry, but I’m pretty sure David Brooks considers all Christians, from Syrian Orthodox to UCC to Southern Baptists as an amorphous mass. In his mind, the “orthodox” ones are the real ones who follow all the rules, and then there are the lax ones who don’t live according to the Law. David Brooks has zero interest in Christian theology, or in analyzing the differences among Christian sects. He is like a milquetoast Mel Gibson discussing the nuances between Modern Orthodoxy vs. traditional Orthodoxy vs. Reconstructionism in Judaism. In short, he is a bigot himself and happens to be talking out of his ass.
boatboy_srq
@Patrick: Worse even than that (for the folks worshipping Gun-Totin’ Capitalist Jeebus) – He associated with tax collectors.
bcw
@Punchy: And Brooks gets the facts wrong: the fine hasn’t been levied, the $150K is the upper limit on possible fines under the law. To date the highest fine in the bakery/florist/bigot cases is $1000.
Botsplainer
There’s no demographic that expects greater political correctness than authentic heartland ‘Murkans of Fundivangelical faith. They expect to be patted on the back about everything, praised for everything, forgiven for everything and criticized about nothing, all because Jesus – and this extends to their murderous, labor-stealing, traitorous forebears as well as their gutless mothers, fathers, pastors, teachers and mentors who silently collected the benefits of the segregated society up into the 60s.
Jerzy Russian
@OzarkHillbilly: Hey! I resemble both of those remarks!
gbear
As usual, the ‘reader’s choice’ comments at that article are a joy to read.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
So, we are supposed to make additional special concessions to the feelings of one group, already given particular mention in the US Constitution, While they are not required to respect the rights (much less the feelings) of a group they disapprove of. How can we call it any thing other than the Indiana Godbotherer Special Privilege Act of 2015.
beltane
@Patrick: It’s already a meme on Facebook:
boatboy_srq
@beltane: THERE we agree completely. Especially the “zero interest in Christian theology” and “happens to be talking out of his a##” parts. The problem is that for any of us with any sense of religious history or any meaningful identification with non-Fundie Christianity, what he’s said here – carefully couched so he thinks he would offend the fewest possible – is orders of magnitude more offensive than if he’d simply come out and used the names the various groups call themselves. NYT is hearing from me on this, and I hope from anyone else reading this that sees Brooks’ article, picks up that particular garbage line and thinks, “What The ####ing ####!?!?”
Crusty Dem
Say what you will about the rest of his tripe, this pretty much nails it for me. What’s missing is even the slightest hint that these claims are incorrect.
His answer is about the fined baker in Oregon, but how much of a bigot do you have to be to say no to a specific cake customer? It’s fucking cake, not a moral quandary.
boatboy_srq
@beltane: That’s beautiful.
beltane
@boatboy_srq: Look at the readers’ comments. They are taking him to the woodshed.
Laertes
This law has been grossly misconstrued! We didn’t mean for it to be unpopular.
Glidwrith
@Belafon: I probably missed you in the previous thread where you asked that question. My response was “your intolerance kills”. After all, that’s what the bigots want -the right to kill without consequence anyone who is different.
Tenar Darell
@satby: Wait what? Where’d this happen…that faceplace?
K488
All one has to do to confirm the hollowness of Brooks’s words is to substitute “mixed race” for “same-sex.” As a recent transplant to Indiana, I have been relieved to see the likes of the mayor of Indianapolis as well as the president of IU come out strongly against this law. Not to mention the strong words against the law and its intentions from the pulpit of the mainline church where I sing in the choir.
Redshift
Wrote a while ago, this movement stopped being about “tolerance” and started being about demanding equality. Considering he works for a major newspaper, you’d think Brooks might have heard about that.
And as for “balance”, equality cuts both ways – LGBTQ people are already not allowed to discriminate against fundamentalist Christians, no matter how deeply they object to their lifestyle.
gene108
Nobody is forcing people to work with gays.
These right-wing fuck nuggets do not want to lose business, so they hide their bigotry, get a loyal gay customer and when the gay wants a wedding serviced – photography, floral arrangement, etc. – they tell them to fuck off.
If they want to be upfront about their bigotry and lose business, not only from gays but people who do not support this right-wing fuck nuggetry, that’d be one thing, but they want to have their cake and eat it too.
eric
My favorite expression that I thought Camus wrote, but cannot find: “Ideology is spiritual imperialism.” Couple ideology with hubris or a lack of humility and you have gulags (or FEMA camps)
beltane
@K488: Yes, the law is intended to provide legal cover to those who wish to deny other people their humanity. If David Brooks were an honest sort of person, he would defend the law on those terms rather than cloak his real meaning in warm and cuddly terms like “tolerance”.
Roger Moore
@Botsplainer:
This. Can anyone imagine the degree of butthurt were the positions reversed and it were a gay florist who refused to provide flowers for an Evangelical Christian wedding? Hell, the fundies go crazy and claim they’re being oppressed because people use a different December greeting from their preferred version. There’s no way in hell they’d accept being discriminated against for their beliefs. They’re just a bunch of bullies who can dish it out but can’t take it.
Iowa Old Lady
The people arguing for this law are now out of the mainstream, and it’s freaking them out.
CONGRATULATIONS!
I hate to tell Brooksie this, but it’s already happened. Everyone who is not already a Jesus Nazi understands that the Jesus Nazis are bigots, assholes and thugs. The only result has been a rising tide of butthurt, as the fundies slowly start to realize that the only people who love them are themselves.
eric
what differentiates “orthodox” christians from “orthodox” jews and muslims. Just the name underlying their race to the apocalypse.
boatboy_srq
@gene108: The RWFNs (love the full term BTW) already have an “out” – “we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.” They are already legally enabled to exclude anyone from their customer base they don’t like for any reason they choose (provided it doesn’t tread on any protected class). RFRAs do nothing in these circumstances besides protect bigots from legal consequence for denying service and loudly and proudly announcing their bigoted reason for turning away business in the process. RFRAs give legal cover to hate speech: pure’n’simple.
CONGRATULATIONS!
He meant “fundamentalist”, I think, but learning anything about the people you’re writing about certainly never has been Brooks’ forte.
If Ortho Judaism is anything like fundie Christianity, well, that sucks for everyone.
boatboy_srq
@eric: It’s not the Christian / Jewish / Muslim dichotomy that’s the problem here: it’s “orthodox” versus Orthodox. As Beltane mentioned above, it’s entirely likely that Brooks doesn’t understand that distinction: here Brooks seems to be labeling any Xtian who claims to follow Scripture precisely (otherwise known in the Real World as “Bible-Believing Christian”) as “orthodox”, which in this particular case is inaccurate, ugly and grossly offensive to more than a few of us. It’s especially offensive given that the code wingnut Xtians follow has about 5% of its origins in Leviticus and 95% created from whole cloth by their preachers sometime in the last century or so: there’s very, VERY little in their ethics that is directly drawn from Scripture and reams of guidance available in Scripture that they (conveniently) ignore. Orthodox Jews are fairly conservative, but they draw their conservatism from Torah and Talmud and adhere reasonably closely to the laws laid out therein. Capital-O Orthodox Christians have a comparable relationship with both Testaments, though they include much more of the New Testament in their teachings.
RSA
@Baud:
Notice also where Brooks is preemptively assigning blame for this hypothetical bloody war of all against all. On people who aren’t patient enough to wait until older bigots die.
kindness
David Brooks felt compelled to write trash. What a shock! News at 11.
Gin & Tonic
@Crusty Dem: but how much of a bigot do you have to be to say no to a specific cake customer?
How much of a bigot do you have to be to say “I’m not baking the cake because you’re queers” as opposed to, if you really just “prefer” not to, saying “sorry guys, I already have two other cakes for that date and I’m too busy.” Why can’t Bobo’s politeness extend to that side?
boatboy_srq
@Iowa Old Lady: They haven’t been in the mainstream for nearly 600 years. Until recently all agreed that was a good thing. As short a time as the mid-70s they were content to remain in their own little closed communities so they wouldn’t be polluted by mainstream culture. It’s only been in the last few decades that they’ve decided that they ought to be in the mainstream, and the freakout is from the finally-dawning realization that no matter how hard they try they aren’t going to get there.
Mike J
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
It’s annoying that the media accepts the self serving definition of religions given by the worst of each. The very worst people in each religion will set themselves up as the gatekeepers and loudly declare that the 90% of christians/jews/muslims that don’t follow their flavor aren’t real true christians/jews/muslims. And then the media describes people as being more faithful or less faithful based on the scale established by the crazy people.
Disciples of Christ are not less Christian than the spewers of hatred. They have a different understanding of what Christ teaches. Reform Jews are not less Jewish than Haredim. Muslims who embrace modernity are not less Muslim than daesh.
raven
What bothers me is that cake frosting is sugar and crisco!
boatboy_srq
@Crusty Dem: @Gin & Tonic: The question is “how much of a bigot do you have to be to say no to a specific cake customer because you think the customer is an Icky unGodly Sinning F#ggot?” They can say no to nearly any specific cake customer already, without giving any reason whatever: it’s the legal opportunity to tell the Icky unGodly Sinning would-be-customer what they think of him/her to his/her face that the law would protect. That adds a heaping serving of entitlement to the bigotry.
Skippy-san
“If orthodox Christians are suddenly written out of polite society as modern-day Bull Connors, this would only halt progress, polarize the debate and lead to a bloody war of all against all.”-
F*ck you Bobo. If they don’t want to be wriitten out of society they should stop trying to force their bloody religion down all of our throats.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Gin & Tonic: Hey, I have my prejudices. And I’ll confess to one: I flat out don’t like religious people. Never have.
But it sure has never stopped me from taking their money to provide them with goods and services, and thanking them – sincerely, I might add – for the opportunity to do so.
You gotta be some kind of raging dick, one whose dickishness so pervades your soul that it blinds you to everything else, to turn down money from a paying customer.
satby
@Tenar Darell: Yep. And, it’s fine. I haven’t actually seen these distant family members more than 2x in 15 years anyway, so who cares?
Central Planning
@Jerzy Russian:
@Baud:
Made me think of this Archer quote:
Archer – Who uses the metric system?
Lana – Every country in the world except us, Liberia, and Burma.
Archer – Wow…you normally don’t think of those countries as having their shit together.
Mike J
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
You also need to have an inflated sense of importance to believe that selling the sex organs of dead plants makes you a part of the wedding instead of just another vendor.
Amir Khalid
This moron David Brooks is saying that, in a society which has agreed that discriminating against gay people is wrong, gay people should be magnanimous towards the intolerant, and put up with being discriminated against. In other words, gay people should accept being deliberately wronged. My own editors would never have let me get away with saying something that obviously stupid. I guess that’s why they pay him the big bucks.
Roger Moore
@Gin & Tonic:
Because it’s only ever a pretext. The real impoliteness is forcing people to stop living in the past and confront the present and the future. Since it’s only liberals who do that, they’re the only ones he criticizes.
xopher
“There are too many stories like the Oregon bakery….” Seriously? There are like two such stories. The florist from Washington was recently slapped on the wrist with a $1000 fine. Big deal.
If Christians can’t deal with the modern world, they are welcome to enter a monastery.
Dave C
@Amir Khalid:
It takes a brilliant mind to say things as dumb as the things that David Brooks says.
Keith G
Pagan statism.
That is a term that I had not heard until yesterday’s Fresh Air. The title of the segment is How ‘One Nation’ Didn’t Become ‘Under God’ Until The ’50s Religious Revival.
If I were still teaching hs US history, I would so be using this in class.
It’s a good listen.
J R in WV
@raven:
No, no, NO! Sugar, flavorings, and sweet butter!
Crisco is for frying fish…
Punchy
This is pure genius. Just wonderful. Can we get this on rotating tag line, pronto?
Frankensteinbeck
Oh, Bobo. Back to tell us that if we’d just EAT the anthrax and tire rims, we’d like it!
@Botsplainer:
Assholes demand to be praised for being assholes. In this case, an entire religion and major political movement has been built, not about principles, but about being assholes.
@Glidwrith:
This is an important wisdom. A major element of conservative morality is fantasizing about murder and justifying murder. How they reacted to Zimmerman, and the arguments used for gun laws are prime exhibits for that. You would expect this kind of thing from a movement of assholes.
Does the racism make them assholes, or does being assholes make them racists? This, I cannot answer.
@boatboy_srq:
I think it’s a little more complex than that. It ties into racism, because fundamentalist Christianity changed sharply after desegregation. It also ties into the secularization of the country. We live in a country now where if you say you’re doing something for Jesus, it’s half-and-half you’ll be applauded or made fun of. That’s a serious change from a universal acceptance of Christianity as a background truth that was the state of America and most of Europe for… centuries, millennia. For the people who define their social group by their religion, the world is crumbling around their ears. Also, as above, these people tend to be assholes.
MomSense
@Laertes:
I think that is exactly the problem. These people are so in the right wing media bubble that they think they are the majority, that they are the real ‘Murkans, and that they are representative of ‘Murkan values. Now they are finding out that their values are not as popular or representative as well. Will this cause them to change? I doubt it. They will probably just double down on their persecution complex.
Amir Khalid
I took a quick look at the comments on Brooks’ column. He’s getting the usual hammering from exasperated readers. I suppose The New York Times is never going to ackowledge that he’s stinking up their op-ed page, and turf him out like they had to do with Bill Kristol.
AdamK
@beltane: I think he’s reading and copying Rod Dreher, and Orthodox Christian who makes exactly these stupid arguments and uses exactly the same big-O little-o distinction. Never underestimate the lack of originality where this asshole’s concerned.
peach flavored shampoo
FTFY.
MomSense
@Gin & Tonic:
Bobo will never be happy until all of us who are non oligarchs and non right kind of Christian and not white male and straight become like Dickens’ Oliver Twist and ask ever so politely if we can please have some more.
scav
Thing about orthodoxy is its hererodoxy.
Well, that and its ubiquity. All momma’s children got othodox.
MattF
@J R in WV: Crisco is not for anything, IMO. I use peanut oil for frying fish– and peanut oil is also used for deep-frying turkeys, so it’s not just for elite snobs.
bemused
@satby:
You seem to have moved on in your life without them just fine but they haven’t. Why do they bother to try to berate you?
MomSense
@raven:
Now that is an actual abomination!
pseudonymous in nc
I don’t know what’s most insufferable: his clarted-up ignorance, or his po-faced puffery. I pity Moral Hazard, the rented Irish setter.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: Kristol was so obviously a political hack that it was just embarrassing for the NYT. Mustn’t fluster the Gray Lady.
gene108
@Roger Moore:
They do not have to take it. They have guns and are willing to use them.
Abortion clinic in your state offending your sensibilities? Kill the doctors, who work there!
America is never going to tack Left, until we publicly deal with this country’s long history of right-wing terrorism. I’m not holding my breath waiting for it to happen, but there are some very dangerous people, who the Republican Party has been giving political cover to for at least a generation.
JPL
Pence is giving a statement. streaming is available at TPM
Tenar Darell
@satby: Hah! It is probably good that I do not Facebook. I see some of those relatives once a year at Passover, and I don’t really want to know for sure if they’re raging d*cks or not. It makes it really hard to be polite if they’ve called me names.
@Mike J: Unfortunately Jewish people do this to ourselves when we use “very Jewish” or “practicing Jew” as some kind of mark of distinction. We give props to keeping kosher, daily prayers, and the studying of Talmud to the Haredim without actually pointing out that Modern Orthodox, Conservative and Reform do the same, in different proportions and emphasis, but still quite Jewish. I’ve noticed it for a while, but it has begun to really bother me.
JPL
Pence, blah, blah, blah, blah
EdTheRed
So it took almost 100 comments for someone to see what you did there…I see you, Zandar. Emmet Otter lyrics FTW.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFJ2jxIe4CQ
Belafon
@JPL:
I’m pretty sure he’s whih.
JPL
Pence wants legislation added to the bill that states, no one has the right to discriminate. He thinks it’s a clarification but also a fix to the bill.
patrick II
Mike Pence has been asserting, since the bill has passed, that the bill is not about discrimination. That is easy enough to test as a Georgia legislator already has:
Since Pence has already said that they needed an amendment to “fix” the bill, and he also says the bill is not about discrimination, so let the Indiana amendment state that as simply as Rep Jacobs of Georgia did to make that non-discrimination clear.
I’m not holding my breath, but people should challenge him to do it.
Botsplainer
@AdamK:
Dreher knows fuck-all about the Orthodox Christianity he converted to and likes to write about.
Fact is, American converts have done their damnedest to ruin it from the middle of the sanctimonious convert pit of the OCA; they got recognized and mostly run out of positions of importance among the Antiochian and Greek archdioceses in North America, and didn’t make significant inroads into the other ethnic branches. There’s a little inroad into ROCOR, but that was due to the affiliation with OCA and think that’ll sputter soon.
MattF
@Tenar Darell: During the (brief) period that I tried being observant, I referred to it as “more Kosher than thou.” There’s really no limit to it.
bemused
@JPL:
Is he reading strictly from a script written for him? Is he taking questions after his statement? I can’t imagine how he can dig himself out of the hole he is in.
MattF
@bemused: How about “It’s just pandering. All politicians do it.”
boatboy_srq
@Frankensteinbeck: Oh, there’s definitely racism baked into that toxic pastry. I sometimes wonder whether all the whinging over Teh Ghey isn’t substitution for the racism that’s no longer acceptable in polite society.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Why yes. Yes they are. Any claim to be otherwise is a disingenuous lie.
scav
@MattF: Don’t even grant them that, there is no singularly and universally recognized set of orthodox behaviors and beliefs that people are living up to to a greater or lessor degree. Everyone has their own measurement stick, calls it orthodox, runs a flag up it and pledges allegiance (and then more or less lives up to their own professed ideals). What everyone does not do is use same ruler then as a weapon to beat up the neighbors as though it was the single scepter with which to rule all.
JPL
@bemused: Now he’s saying both Obama and Clinton signed this bill and that the media misrepresented it. Not sure I can listen to much more.
bemused
@JPL:
Not surprising.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@MattF:
As multiple people already beat me to pointing out, it’s fascinating that Brooksie thinks the polite thing to do is for GLBT people to politely swallow bigotry to their faces, not for wedding vendors to say, “Sorry, I’m booked up that day,” if they don’t want to do work for same-sex weddings.
I’m too lazy to look for it, but I’d be interested to know if Miss Manners has addressed this topic. Knowing her long history of support for social equality for LGBT people dating back to the 1980s, I’m guessing that she thinks the polite and proper response to bigotry of this type is a firm lawsuit. “Politeness” doesn’t mean letting other people walk all over you.
Villago Delenda Est
The NYT comments that I looked at (and I looked at a lot) are all kicking Brooks’ worthless ass up and down Broadway.
JPL
Pence is focused on clarifying this law not changing the non-discrimination law.
MattF
@JPL: One reason he’s stuck is that the people who defend the law as it is are so patently bigoted. He’s all by himself, impaled on the end of a sharp stick.
boatboy_srq
@Botsplainer: This sounds a bit like the Episcopalian/Anglican schism the US parishes are dealing with. A bunch of conservatist Episcopalians got fed up with Canterbury being rational, and reached out to (I think) Nigeria (!) for spiritual guidance in its place. Same philosophical foundation for Uganda’s nasty LGBT laws. They’re real pieces of work. Being a “smells and bells” Episcopalian, I used to refer to myself as “Anglican” (meaning adhering to Church of England practices): not any more thanks to those wingnuts.
scav
He defense is that IN is so together that its legislative body have nothing better to do than pass legislation that duplicates already existing legislation, for problems that are not occurring, to protect behaviors could not possibly potentially ever occur and then defend same non-behavior, non-functional, non-legislation to the death on an increasingly global stage.
bemused
@JPL:
When is he going to get around to clarifying clarifying?
JPL
Pence’s response to everything is The media made me beat you excuse.
Mike J
@boatboy_srq:
There’s absolutely no doubt about it. This is the lunch counter apartheid continued.
JPL
Oh f..k …. now he is talking about Obamacare
D58826
Gov. Pence is trying to explain the religious freedom law again and why it doesn’t discriminatew. The folks at KOS have been liveblogging it and one of-the comments is
makes perfect sense to me (sigh)
MattF
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Miss Manners leaves room for in-group bad behavior, but demonstrates… um… intolerance for other bad behavior:
https://books.google.com/books?id=Q348PWE1p6MC&pg=PA227&lpg=PA227&dq=miss+manners+bigotry&source=bl&ots=LDgFQS3Nuo&sig=-sYmj8dfE-Rc2ZmThP7oFz-mwHQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Bb0aVerkLseLNsXZgOgC&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=miss%20manners%20bigotry&f=false
bemused
@JPL:
Which has what to do with anti-LGBT law? Must be his idea of clarifying the issue.
Iowa Old Lady
@JPL: I’m dazzled by how insane this all is.
boatboy_srq
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Remember those “quiet rooms” Rmoney wanted to keep all the difficult conversations contained within? Brooks lives in one of them.
scav
@bemused: Doctors are being forced to treat Sick People and get covered in Cooties by Commies in Behghazi
(This is all suddenly getting a little Doctor Seuss)
Mike J
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
I don’t understand this argument. If a business is open to the public, they should accept business from every member of the public. If they’re allowed to turn down business because they’re bigots, they should not be required to lie about it. They should be allowed to tell people that they are bigots.
If they get taken to court for discriminating, that’s the price for standing up for their principles. Not every principle that is fought for is a good one.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@MattF:
One of her shortest and most classic was:
And that’s circa about 1985. She’s been on the right side for a long time.
rikyrah
My co-worker gets us hooked every year.
Watching Red Tail Hawks
http://cams.allaboutbirds.org/channel/16/Red-tailed_Hawks/
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Mike J:
As with the employment conversation yesterday, if a vendor doesn’t want to work for you, they can always find an excuse, just like an employer can usually come up with a reason to fire or lay you off that doesn’t involve an illegally bigoted reason. It’s only the stupid vendors or employers who insist they should be allowed to give you a bigoted reason for it.
Think of the guy who wanted a baker to make him an anti-gay cake with a quote from Leviticus etc on it. In your construction, the baker should have no right to say no if s/he is offended by what the customer wants.
Belafon
@bemused: If it weren’t for Obamacare, all those gays would die and we wouldn’t be having this issue.
///
bemused
@scav:
Is he topping his pathetic performance on Stephanopoulos?
Iowa Old Lady
@rikyrah: We have an eagle cam not far from here:
http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles
This time of year, the library always has it up on the big screen in the children’s section.
D58826
@Mike J:
This was argued out in the 60’s over civil rights and integration. The bigots tried the religion card then and lost. Just a pity that we have to keep re-litigating this every generation. But we’re in the same boat with abortion and access to contraceptives. Unfortunately we seem to have a Supreme Court that wishes to impose Christian ‘Sharia’ on the rest of us
Villago Delenda Est
@Iowa Old Lady: They want to hate on the gays with government sanction, but they don’t want to admit that this is precisely what this law enables them to do.
Because it would make them look bad.
As opposed to simply being bigoted assholes. They’re sure they NOT bigoted assholes, even though they want to have the government sanction their bigoted assholishness.
Yes, I know this makes no sense at all. We are dealing with the permanently senseless here.
bemused
@Belafon:
Lordie, it sounds like a mess.
Villago Delenda Est
@bemused: He didn’t stick the landing then. He wants to stick the landing.
Belafon
@bemused: Pretty soon, I expect him to pull out the video of Michael Brown taking cigarillos from that convenience store.
MattF
@Villago Delenda Est: But the pool of shit is hard to hit from a distance even if you’re a Governor– and there’s a risk of a splash-landing.
eyelessgame
I had this immense sense of deja vu reading this. This is literally a William Safire article from the 1960s, replacing “negro” with “gay”. Brooks should be sued for plagiarism.
eyelessgame
And of course I mean “literally” in the figurative sense, just to drive the Safires of the world figuratively insane.
Ruviana
@boatboy_srq: It’s one of those vast spaces for entertaining.
Cervantes
@eyelessgame:
In the ’60s he worked [1] in PR and he wrote [2] cheap, bitter, and slimy speeches for Nixon and Agnew. The NYT gig did not begin until he jumped ship [3] during the Watergate saga circa ’73.
[1] Figuratively, at best.
[2] Literally — but not literary.
[3] Figuratively only, alas.
Mustang Bobby
@boatboy_srq:
…with padded walls and nice men in white coats who give him the Blue Pill every four hours.
Zandar
@EdTheRed: THANK YOU.
Germy Shoemangler
@Cervantes: Didn’t he come up with nattering nabobs of negativity?
jl
Brooks could have written a helpful column here, but he just has to hack it out with incoherent BS.
I have to admit that the more i read about the federal law Clinton signed and what Indiana did, the more confused I get. My excuse is I am not a lawyer. As far as I can tell, the 1993 federal law was supposed to protect religious practices, and the emphasis was on things like, say, being able to use peyote for Native American reliions, or protect say, Muslims or Mennonites’ right to wear their preferred religious dress. As far as I understand it, the Supreme Court of ideological hacks gutted that aspect of the law as much as they could, with their ruling against some guys who wanted to use peyote.
So, Indiana passes a cleverly worded law that puts the emphasis on the right of religious sects to discriminate in conducting public commerce. And seems like Pence and his GOP gang more or less admit this implicitly because when asked about it, they conveniently waffle. So, now they want to somehow ‘clarify’. I don’t have much faith that they will be able to produce a clear clarification.
And, as I have observed, Pence admitted on the radio, that even in Indiana, there seemed to be no wave of disputes or court cases that required a law. Pence and his gang dopes just got up one day and were handed some revelation that a new law was needed to make things clear. I guess that the GOP philosophy of minimal government in action.
If I misunderstand and some of the BJ legal flying wedge can help me out, I would appreciate it.
Edit: in other words, as I understand the truth of the matter, the intent of the 1993 federal law is being turned on its head, and we are supposed to go along with that. Another lesson in ‘the law is an ass’.
Brooks’ passive aggressively disguised whine of the aggrieved and oppressed intolerant dogmatic conservative (but oh so genteel and respectable) religious bigot, who cannot understand that we live in a secular country, was a waste of time.
Mike J
@Zandar: I recognized it as lyrics, but I am not familiar with Mr. Otter’s oeuvre.
Jay C
@JPL: @MattF:
Jeez, just when you think Mike Pence has finally reached the bottom of the hole, he manages to find an even-longer-handled shovel! Did he say he was going to ask for/push for/ actually support an anti-discrimination “clarification” to their RFRA? If he does, he’s going to have some trouble, since his fundie/”Family”/Spanish Inquisition pals have already said they will fight tooth and nail to keep the bill as patently discriminatory as they can. I wonder of any Republicans in Indiana (or elsewhere) are having any second thoughts about the wisdom of promoting sack-of-hammers-dumb wheelhorses as Governors?*
*probably not
Cervantes
@Germy Shoemangler:
“Nattering nabobs of negativism.”
And in the same (Agnew) speech: “Hopeless, hysterical, hypochondriacs of history.”
peach flavored shampoo
So is Pence really going to advocate that LBGT peeps have protected status? If so, doesn’t that pretty much gut the intent (if not the actual words) of this law?
Wont his base excoriate him for this?
Germy Shoemangler
@Cervantes: Jeez…. and people found that clever? It sounds hackish and stupid.
If I had been agnew or nixon, I would have asked “you expect me to say this crap?”
momus
And Canadian.
Amir Khalid
@Germy Shoemangler:
I would only write like that if I were trying to (as they say) extract the Michael.
EdTheRed
@Mike J: In the late ’70s or thereabouts, Jim Henson and his crew did a musical adaptation of a Russel and Lilian Hoban children’s book for HBO, called Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas. It’s as awesome as it sounds. BBQ was the song Emmet and his jugband played at their rehearsal. The whole thing is on youtube (minus some of the original narration by Kermit the Frog, for various intellectual property reasons).
Non-otter cover version from Carbon Leaf:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EPoglOrICs
Cervantes
@Germy Shoemangler:
Agnew was addicted to alliteration.
JPL
@peach flavored shampoo: He’s not willing to change the discrimination law to include lgbt.
Cacti
I’ve wondered for a while now…
How do Republican men resolve the cognitive dissonance between their hatred of gays, and the feeling they get when they see Vladimir Putin shirtless?
MattF
@Cervantes: Also regular cash payments from his… ah… friends.
MattF
@Cacti: Cognitive dissonance isn’t bothered by ‘logical’ conflicts– it’s about how a social structure supports beliefs that may be contradicted by mere ‘facts’. So, if all your man-pals hate gays and admire Vlad, everything is okeydokey.
Glidwrith
@jl: Not a lawyer, but your understanding is sound, save that Scalia’s bigotry against a religion that wasn’t Catholicism came first and Congress’ response was the Freedom act. The Supremes further gutted and twisted that law in favor of their Catholic bigotry in the Hobby Lobby ruling.
brantl
@satby:
How’d you get so lucky? How do I get them to shun me? And can we get a new tagline for “Let’s kick Bobo in the stones”?
Chris
I swear to God, there is absolutely nothing more pathetic than a bigot mewling for tolerance and understanding and all the things he never, ever would’ve dreamed of extending to his targets back when he was winning, after he’s lost the fight.
At least Hitler had the class to blown his own brains out instead of groveling and begging in front of the Allies. (Though not all his underlings did).
Cervantes
@Germy Shoemangler:
It may be relevant that he was speaking to an audience of California Republicans.
jl
@Glidwrith: thanks for helping me out on the history.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cervantes: Well, I’d say Safire was as well.
brantl
@gene108:
No, they want to have your cake and eat it too.
Villago Delenda Est
@Glidwrith: Scalia seems to be making a really good effort at undoing the “no big whoop” aspect of Kennedy’s presidency.
jl
@Cervantes: I heard on the news this morning that only 28 percent of registered voters in CA are GOP. That is close to the magic number of irredeemable crazy.
47 percent are Democratic and 25 are no party preference.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cervantes: Agnew’s job (aside from collecting his regular bribes) in the Nixon Administration was to be the thrower of red meat at the base.
germy shoemangler
@Cervantes: Ahh… pearls before swine, in that case.
The Thin Black Duke
The hateful idiots who are in favor of this awful law are most likely the same hateful idios who thought Matthew Sheppard deserved what happened to him.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Thin Black Duke: One does not have to be a member of MENSA to discern this.
Jado
Brooks would rather live in a society of polite bigotry than a society of immodest justice. He is a Victorian spinster scandalized by the new Jazz music of equailty, and his pearls and fainting couch are never far from him
Patrick
@peach flavored shampoo:
Yes, but doesn’t that mean they can still discriminate against other groups, such as Muslims, Jews or basically still just about everybody? If so, this is a non-starter. Get rid of the entire law!
Villago Delenda Est
@Patrick: The simple fix would be to cite Federal anti-discrimination law as providing protected classes for this one (which would cover all those nasty unbelievers), and, to add emphasis, including GLBT as a protected class.
This of course would “gut” the intent of the law, but them there be the breaks.
Chris
@Comrade Dread:
They would either say “yes” or “it wouldn’t happen,” but what goes unspoken is that even if you accept that premise, it’s never going to stop there.
First, they say “hey, let’s exempt Christian hospitals and businesses from having to do things against their conscience.” Idea being that everything’ll work out in their little utopia of Balkanization (hey, isn’t that what they’re always accusing us of promoting?), fundiegelicals and right-wing Catholics will be able to keep living in their own towns and pretending gays don’t exist while the rest of the world goes by, you keep to your own and I’ll keep to my own… whatever.
But next, they pass a rule saying that state and local governments aren’t allowed to support any of the hospitals that do treat gays and allow abortions and whatnot. Because then, right wing Catholics and fundiegelicals will have their tax money spent on things they don’t support, and that’s also unbearable because it’s against their conscience… whatever. And then they’ll pass rules saying that public hospitals aren’t allowed to perform any un-Catholic, un-fundie operations, for the same reasons.
Then, they’ll deny any funds to any charities or programs that have any economic ties to any of the hospitals that do that, or any of the organizations that finance the hospitals that do that, or wev… again for the same reason.
And once they’re done passing rules against anyone with six degrees of separation from an abortion, a gay marriage, or whatever, you’ll end up in a world where you can theoretically exercise your rights, but in practice you can’t, because doing so will turn you into an Untouchable. (Hinduism, not Elliot Ness).
And of course once they’re done with all that, they’ll start passing rules that make it de facto impossible for any institutions that don’t abide by Accepted Christian Morality to operate. Oh, yes, you can have an abortion. But here, we passed this law requiring parental consent, and this other law saying you can’t do it after this date, and this other law saying that you have to give X days notice and undergo all these tests… etc. (To quite an extent this already happens).
They have absolutely no intention of living in that little “ours is good for us, yours is good for you” world they’re talking about in the media, and every intention of using the power of the state to make your life de facto if not de jure impossible unless you abide by their rules. We’ve seen them do it after abolition and after desegregation over minority rights, and we’re seeing them do it right now over gay rights and women’s rights. They just want us to unilaterally disarm and promise that we won’t do the things they have every intention of doing.
Glidwrith
@Villago Delenda Est: I find it ironic in the extreme that we have nutball Protestants parroting the Catholic dogma, while professing ever-lasting Jewish love when the Jewish religion holds that Mom comes first and not the fetus.
jl
@Villago Delenda Est: My understanding is that this approach is what the Indianapolis Star is recommending.
Basically, you dopes passed an unneeded and bad-faith law that nobody wanted (even in Hoosier Indiana) except a little band of intolerant religious bigots, and you guys are too chickienshit to get rid of it now. So adopt a state version of the federal anti-discrimination law and get rid of this crap that way.
I guess that would forcibly convert their bogus religious freedom restoration act into something useful. But they don’t want to do that. they really have no interest in free expression of religion, except the right of intolerant bigots to act like intolerant bigots towards anyone they don’t like in the course of public commerce.
Heliopause
999 times out of a thousand I prefer knowledge to ignorance. In this case, I am content to have no idea what this means.
Jay in Oregon
So when Brooks wrote this about Iran:
His conclusion is that diplomacy and statesmanship would embolden Iran. But when we apply that same reasoning to Indiana’s RFRA, he feels that the LGBT community and their allies need to be reasonable and accomodating of the feefees of religious bigots?
Monala
@Crusty Dem: Some creative journalist called up two of the bakeries in these cases, over a period of several weeks, to request specific cakes for events that conflicted with stated Biblical values: a celebration cake for a friend getting divorced; a baby shower cake for an unmarried friend; and a couple more. In each case, the bakers in question eagerly said that there would be no problem making such a cake.
Monala
@gbear: True! But as usual, the NYT Picks works hard to be “fair and balanced.”
One of the comments under the Picks was this:
I don’t have a good response to those questions. Can anyone take a stab at how to respond?
boatboy_srq
@Jay in Oregon: Well, “diplomacy and statesmanship” from the LGBT community has certainly emboldened the wingnuts. So in a sense he’s right – just about the wrong set. Although, as we’re seeing in IN, economic interests are beginning to trump ideology (assuming that the bigoted wingnuts are Xtian and not First Church of Mammon).
boatboy_srq
@Monala: Simple answer for the first two: “Do you have to be from the most oppressed part of society to recognize hate and refuse to accommodate it?” For the last one, halal is part of ALL Islam; homophobia is only part of SOME Xtianity – so not comparable.
Brachiator
@Monala:
Well, none of these have anything to do with “deeply held” religious convictions. I don’t even understand how they are supposed to be appropriately analogous test cases.
Is the Klan trying to hire a black photographer to take pictures of their rally? Seems kinda unlikely.
The Jewish baker thing is almost interesting, but again it is really not about violation of deeply held religious principles. And no one would be asking a baker to make a “gay” cake. A baker might reasonably refuse to bake a cake with an obscenity decoration. This has really has nothing to do with refusing to serve a particular customer because of who that person is.
The Muslim butcher again is almost interesting. An deeply observant Jew or observant Muslim could work in a kosher shop, but not one that dealt with pork products. But this has nothing to do with providing a service to customers, or making distinctions between customers you serve and customers you do not serve.
Patrick
@Monala:
Interesting! Pretty telling in the bakeries hypocrisy, isn’t it?
boatboy_srq
@Brachiator: To wingnuts, Teh Ghey is the 21st century’s Racist Nazi Klan, all worshipping our great Godless Kenyan IslamoFascoSoshulist leader. THEY are fighting tooth-and-nail to keep Ahmurrca safe from OUR IRS/FEMA-governed collective farm orgies and mass recreational-abortion parties. Haven’t you been paying attention? ,-)
Gravenstone
@JPL: So if there’s already a Federal law on the books that covers this ground, why exactly did IN need to pass another law that would be subordinate to the Federal one? Lying weasel of course continues to lie without shame.
EthylEster
@MattF wrote:
Sort of like the Pence presser. Most of his remarks were of the “I am NOT a bigot” variety. He provided lots of statements about loving Dr. King so he must be a nice guy. He appears to be as stupid as MY told us years ago that he was.
I do not understand* why no reporter has asked for specific scenarios that would demonstrate the need for the IN law. I also do not understand why no reporter has proposed specific scenarios (SS couple refused accomodations) and asked how the law would change response of businesses. I would like to hear more than one side saying the law promotes discrimination against LGBTQI and the other side saying it does not. Let’s get to some concrete examples….
* well, ok, chalk it up to our failed media.
jl
@JPL:
” Now he’s saying both Obama and Clinton signed this bill and that the media misrepresented it. Not sure I can listen to much more. ”
Pence is lying, or at least reading from a script with lies in it.
jl
@EthylEster: Pence was on the radio a few days ago admitting that there was nothing going on in Indiana that called for this law now, no wave of legal cases, not lawsuits, no widespread conroversy. It just came to him and his cronies that such a one should be passed to ‘make things clear’.
WaterGirl
@raven:Right! But everyone knows that any frosting worth eating is made from butter and sugar and chocolate.
EthylEster
@Amir Khalid:
Yeah, it is amazing how one sided the comments are. And how many there are that flat out excoriate Bobo.
The comments on his articles are frequently MUCH more coherent that the article itself.
EthylEster
@jl: and signing it in a closed ceremony to which only haters were invited is a huge tell…for those paying attention.
Brachiator
@boatboy_srq: Oh, yes, I’m sure the wingnuts blame Obama. The thing is, though, that they have been successful in some of their attacks on women’s reproductive rights at the state level. I see more pain ahead.
And the clock is ticking. The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the same sex marriage cases on April 28. A ruling could come around June 15. Conservatives will go nuts if they don’t get what they want.
Meanwhile, I wonder whether this Indiana idiot governor will find a way to backpedal on his stupidity. He seems to have greatly misjudged how much people in his state wish to stoop to bigotry.
grandpa john
@xopher: Lying is Brook’s chief writing style
boatboy_srq
@Brachiator: I was thinking less the “wingnuts blame Obama” part and more the “Gays are the New Nazis (Marching Proudly Behind Our Blah Fuhrer)” part. See recent whinging (in KY IIRC, mentioned elsewhere on BJ) that LGBT[QI] people already have super-citizen-rights so we don’t need accommodation as a protected class. The association with POTUS is just gravy here.
grandpa john
@eyelessgame: Hell “broken record brooks” is plagerizing himself. He only writes one piece and then posts it over and over.
Brachiator
@boatboy_srq: I cannot begin to process the necessary Orwellian twist to see gays as the New Nazis, or the idiocy of gays having super-citizen rights. But however you look at it, for many of these fools, Obama is anti-American and anti-Christian but pro-gay, and only a restoration of real American bigotry, uh, I mean, values, can save the country. And it’s not so much that gays are super citizens, it’s that they’re uppity (something else they learned from Obama) and must be put back in their place so that decent real Americans can live in peace. Obama is not just gravy, he is symbolic of what happens when you don’t put the “right” kind of people in charge.
Meanwhile, Obama’s presidential veto is the only thing that stands between stupidity and civility at the federal level.
boatboy_srq
@Brachiator: The “necessary Orwellian twist” is simple projection on their part. THEY want to turn us straight, so they convince themselves we want to turn THEM all gay. It’s quite entertaining sometimes (unless they’re crafting public policy). Let a wingnut open its mouth for one sentence more than is necessary to make their conservatist point and you hear it. There’s a remarkable discussion over at LinkedIn which is calling for the “civility” and “patience” that got us into this mess, very a la Brooks. There are a couple commenters there that whose obtuseness – feigned or real – is pretty obvious pretty quickly.
docg
@Patrick: Obviously, Jesus was not a good Christian.
Cpl Cam
@Monala: 1.) Not seeing how gays are analogous to the kkk? Do Christians rightfully fear for their lives around lesbian coupes because of all the lesbian on Christian lynchings over the last hundred years? 2.) No but, then, no one can force a wholesome upstanding church-lady to bake a cake of a gasping anus with the words “I love cock” on it. 3.) No but you can open a bakery that refuses to make chocolate cakes. At all. To anyone.
Cervantes
@docg:
!
Matt
Speak for yourself. For me, the greatest day in history will be when the last Bible is thrown into the smoldering embers of the last church. That particular mindworm has been fucking up humanity and justifying atrocities for thousands of years, and it’s time for it to join the “fiction” section on the bookshelf.