David French, who is an anti-Trump former Republican, self-described Libertarian and Evangelical, was a member of an very “conservative” church that he had to leave for two reasons: his anti-Trump views weren’t tolerated, and his adoption of an Ethiopian child triggered the other members’ racism. French relates the tale in the NYT [that gift link is from Paul Campos at LGM]. Here’s what happened at the church school:
The racism was grotesque. One church member asked my wife why we couldn’t adopt from Norway rather than Ethiopia. A teacher at the school asked my son if we had purchased his sister for a “loaf of bread.” We later learned that there were coaches and teachers who used racial slurs to describe the few Black students at the school. There were terrible incidents of peer racism, including a student telling my daughter that slavery was good for Black people because it taught them how to live in America. Another told her that she couldn’t come to our house to play because “my dad said Black people are dangerous.”
The hook for the piece is that his church convention’s panel on toxic polarization featuring French was cancelled. You can read the whole thing, but the “I was so surprised” tone of the essay is really a “Who’s being naive, Kay” moment. I mean, what staggering level of naivete is required to not understand the beliefs of these so-called Christian evangelicals?
French’s record is far from spotless. To pick one glaring example, he reversed his anti-LGBTQ and anti-trans positions in, checks Wikipedia, November, 2022. This means that — until less than 2 years ago — French, like his former church congregants, believed that some fellow human beings were lesser and should be cast out of his church. He used his Harvard Law education and platform provided by a number of big publications to justify his bigotry. In addition, his wife is a ghostwriter for conservative assholes including Sarah and Bristol Palin, noted anti-bigotry and pro-LGBTQ advocates.
In other words, here’s a man who, until very recently, wanted a group of innocent people who showed no hate towards others to be denied the supposed grace and salvation of his precious sky fairy. Now he’s on the receiving end of a little taste of what he so recently wanted for others, and we’re supposed to fall all over ourselves in sympathy. Perhaps when he heads to his nearest Pride celebration and sets up a foot washing station, I’ll start showing a little more concern for his plight. Until then, he can cash his check for his Sunday Times Op-Ed and go the fuck away.
Another Scott
Yeah, too many people can’t think about being in another’s shoes. They don’t realize how bad fellow humans can be until they’re on the receiving end.
So, yay, progress! But, come on man. Use your brain…
Thanks.
(Also – typo – “on on” in the first line after the blockquote.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Barbara
Did he really never hear racially biased comments before he adopted his daughter? Or did he not care because they weren’t aimed at him? I grew up around a fair number of racists and they only held back around me if I made it clear that I thought a lot less of people who held such views (and cared enough about my opinion that it made a difference).
dmsilev
Rewording the classic statement alluded to in the post title a bit: “I never thought the leopard would eat MY face sobs the man who joined the First Church of Christ, Face-eating Leopard”.
Baud
Wonder if he’ll raise the kid to be conservative.
dmsilev
@Barbara: The latter, and he actually says as much in the article:
Suzanne
@dmsilev:
Genuine LAWL. Like, my family is asking me what’s so damn funny.
trollhattan
“Starving Norwegians” my second punk band.
Layer8Problem
“It’s perfectly fine when we’re all being mean to randos and faceless ciphers out there somewhere! None of those people live around here and they certainly never come to any of our affairs. But now you’re being mean to me and to people I love, which is totally different! Surely you can see the problem, right?”
Michael Bersin
“First they came for the overpaid right wingnut pundits…”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
As the saying goes “No one is really free until everyone is free, because otherwise freedom is simply a privilege that can be taken away.”
smith
Occasionally I see I see a blog post or article about a former MAGA who’s seen the light, and always have extremely mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, you’d want to encourage the kind of self-reflecton that leads someone away from the dark side. On the other hand, you want to scream WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKNG?
In this case, it seems to be a classic case of conservative anti-empathy. They’re happy to sign on to cruel and vindictive treatment of outgroups in the name of their lord until that treatment directly affects them or someone they love. It’s not really a moral awakening, just another variety of self-interest.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Another Scott: Thanks, fixed typo.
cain
Looks like he fucked around and found out.
Suzanne
@dmsilev:
A lot of woke people tried to point this out, but there are none so blind as those who enjoy watching leopards eat other people’s faces.
I messed up this metaphor.
Barbara
@dmsilev: The average African-American has many more generations of American heritage than the average European-American.
geg6
I’ll take a temporary ally right now but if and when the danger passes, French can fuck right off.
geg6
@Barbara:
For sure! My earliest ancestors in America came over in the 1840-1850s. It was my maternal great-grandparents. My father’s parents were immigrants to the US from Britain in the early 1900s.
kindness
Reading the piece it was hard to understand how French never saw the hate and racism in his chosen church before. Honestly these ‘Christian Nationalists’ would hate Jesus because a) he was black b) preached giving help/charity to the poor c) all of the above.
Chet Murthy
@Barbara: I have a Jewish friend who grew up in a small North Texas town. He’s big, tall, strong, and talks with a drawl. Doesn’t look like your stereotypical Jewish guy, to those who don’t know him well. He told me once that white people say the *damned-est* thing around him. Just amazing stuff about Jewish people, they pop off with. And of course, every other kind of racism.
So I’m sure they were quite free with their racism around French; he just didn’t notice, until it was directed at his daughter and wife (and himself).
gene108
I openly welcome anyone who gets a clue and gains some bit of self awareness about how their past beliefs and associations hurt others.
Hopefully he has access to the platforms he has used in the past, and can shed some light on how dangerous his former group of people are for all the normies in the back.
Barbara
@smith: See, e.g., Rob Portman (gay rights) or Pete Domenici (mental health treatment). I think there is a spectrum, and caring about others should not actually displace caring about yourself, but the utter lack of empathy among people like French is a moral failure and IMHO an admission that faith isn’t really what he and his co-religionists have in common.
Michael Bersin
@smith:
“…In this case, it seems to be a classic case of conservative anti-empathy. They’re happy to sign on to cruel and vindictive treatment of outgroups in the name of their lord until that treatment directly affects them or someone they love. It’s not really a moral awakening, just another variety of self-interest…”
Yeah, that forgive and forget thing, too.
“…God does, but I don’t
God will, but I won’t
And that’s the difference
Between God and me…”
matt
The kid is the real victim. Send your kid to a real school, dumbshit.
bg
@smith: I tend to view it more through the parable of the Prodigal Son. Remember, what drove that son to return to his father was purely self-interest. But when he was received with love rather than recrimination and shaming, he eventually grew into a worthy member of the household.
It’s easy to point at everything this guy has gotten wrong and it is not wrong to say that his turning from it was motived by self-interest/experience of what he had previously overlooked or taken part in. But a True Turning, to borrow the chasidic phrase, is seldom instant and fully realized. It takes work to overcome decades of treading a wrong path (frequently almost on autopilot). So we have a choice: welcome the scales falling from his eyes and help him on his way to being better or turn a cold shoulder because of the sins of his past.
I know which one the gospel holds up as the right approach.
smith
@matt: Depending on where he lives, the kid will probably still encounter racism, it just won’t pretend to be all Christian-y racism.
Michael Bersin
@Chet Murthy:
I’ve noticed alright. Still do. My entire life. I wish I had the power attributed to us. The problem is, I’d use it.
“You don’t look Jewish.”
I’m 6’4″, 265 pounds. What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Suzanne
@Barbara:
This, 100%.
Suzanne
@Michael Bersin: I’ve been told that I look Jewish. I apparently have some Jewish heritage a few generations back. I had a Jewish lady try to set me up with her son when I was in college. I don’t know how to react to any of these situations, either.
John S.
@Chet Murthy:
This has been my personal experience in life as well.
I don’t look particularly Jewish on account of some northern Italian ancestry, so I often pass as “white”. I have heard some pretty wild shit in my life about Jews from people who had no idea who they were talking to.
@Michael Bersin:
I’m 6’ and 230 lbs. Many people just can’t comprehend that Jews can come in all shapes and sizes. If we don’t look like the old Nazi caricatures, we can’t possibly be Jews.
West of the Rockies
Thankfully, people learn, and grace and redemption are valued by most. I will confess that the first time or two I heard “Black lives matter,” (as a stand alone phrase with no explanation) my immediate reaction was, “Don’t all lives matter?” Upon hearing the intent and thrust of the message, I immediately then got it.
I suppose if someone is invested in conservative thinking, the patriarchy, etc., it takes a few two-by-fours to the head to change one’s mind.
Cacti
Sounds like a bog standard right winger. It only became a problem when it affected him personally.
jackmac
Baby steps. French has a L O N G way to go, but it’s a start.
John S.
@West of the Rockies:
Amazingly, since moving to Western Washington from South Florida, I have encountered far less antisemitism here. I wouldn’t have expected that to be the case given that there are virtually no Jews around here.
smith
@jackmac: He does deserve some credit for publicly admitting all of this.
Jackie
OT 274 and counting -Palestinians killed during Israel’s rescue of FOUR hostages.
I am sickened by Israel’s celebrating.
SenyorDave
He’s just like Rob Portman, form US senator. He became pro-gay marriage when his son came out. It meant something to him because it affected him personally. The rest of the human race can fuck off as far as people like that are concerned.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Like the saying goes, history doesn’t precisely repeat, but it rhymes. Nowadays, the refrain is “I never thought the leopard would eat my face.” I prefer the older version: “Then they came for me…”
rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)
LOLOLOLOLOLOL can you imagine being a Norwegian orphan and being adopted by an American instead of getting to stay in Norway with a family there? I would be pissed once I got old enough to realize. Let’s see: secular country with no gun violence, one of the highest per capita incomes and HDI scores in the world, fresh seafood year-round, excellent schools, and not being raised by a leading “light” of the wingnuteriat? And I have to give that up to satisfy some jackdaw’s nuclear family fetish? FUCK. YOU. would be the first two English words I learned.
I’m surprised French hasn’t been attacked by his cultmates for adopted a furrin baby and not a white American one, we got orphans here at home what we can’t feed. Why does he hate America?
John S.
@Jackie:
I’m surprised the ratio is that low. Many Israelis (and far too many American Jews) seem to believe that 1 Israeli life is worth an infinite number of Palestinians.
PAM Dirac
@kindness:
That’s what makes it interesting to me. It’s related to the drumpf unfitness discussion in the last post. Not for what it says about the R party or the individuals making the statements, but what our media betters are willing to acknowledge is up for discussion. The image of drumpf as a smart, hard-working, effective business man is clearly nothing but bluster and bullshit as is the notion that a lot of these evangelical sects just love Jesus so much and are not in the least racist dirtbags. The only way to keep these fictions in place is to never examine the underlying facts. As long as the charges of unfitness and racism are coming from the Ds, the media (and the Rs) can pretend that it is just partisan bickering, lying and exaggeration for partisan gain. But now the media seems to be willing to let people inside the house bring up the issues. It is true that the people that are allowed a platform have very little power in the R party, but the fact that the media is at least opening the door at least a little bit to a discussion of these issues beyond the partisan framing suggests the money behind the media is starting to worry that the bullshit might not be in their best interest. It might be just a blip for clicks, but if so that it would be really tricky to put the genie back in the bottle. I agree with Suzanne that time will tell, but I think that big media is the one to watch over the next month or two, not the R party hacks. The R party might not worrying about polls yet, but they would be extremely worried if big media won’t completely shill for their lies.
David_C
I’m finishing up Tim Alberta’s latest book about evangelism and Trump, and there’s a lot of nuance involved. Alberta writes about cheap populism and authoritarianism gradually taking over, and this process is only being sped up by Trump and his Christian soldiers. It’s not easy to just pick up and leave a church if that church has been your community for years or decades, and to see people with whom you worked and trusted turn against you. Alberta points out that a lot of these feelings were underground, and the Trump evangelists are having congregants put pressure on pastors, and congregants are leaving for more political churches where they get a greater sense of belonging and a dopamine rush.
As for French’s recent acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community, he’s about a year ahead of the Methodist church and a few years behind the Presbyterians in his evolution. As more conservatives see the light, the better off we will be. (There’s a parable about this somewhere.)
BTW, a lot of my reading of the book is in the same, “it’s about time” vein.
Sister Golden Bear
@Layer8Problem: That’s it in a nutshell. They see other people (or at least those outside the in-group) as non-player characters.
I’m also reminded of the story I heard about a guy who stopped being a Libertarian after doing ecstasy at a rave and during the trip he had the epiphany that other people had feelings too.
TBone
Is it wrong that I have never read anything by this fucking guy and therefore have no fucks to give? My fucks-growing field is completely bare. Am I the outlier again?
Jackie
@gene108:
Freshly opened eyes is always a joy to see. French has a large following; hopefully his new found awareness peels away a few more GQP voters.
rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)
@TBone: he’s a Tier 2 pundit, I never read any of his stuff even when I was a wingnut myself.
Sure Lurkalot
@dmsilev:
For podcast listeners, Dahlia Lithwick’s Amicus had a good panel discussion on Christian Nationalism.
Rachel Laser, president and CEO at Americans United for Separation of Church and State:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/amicus-with-dahlia-lithwick-law-justice-and-the-courts/id928790786?i=1000658211232
Chet Murthy
@David_C: I read an article that was an interview of Alberta, wherein he describes fellow congregation members at the church his father used to pastor, who came up to him at his father’s *funeral* to upbraid him for his apostasy regarding …. IIRC Trump. Or maybe it was MAGA more generally. But they came up to him literally at his father’s funeral. If I had better expectations of MAGAts, I guess it’d have been mind-blowing to learn that. But I don’t, so it was “same shit, different day”.
Sister Golden Bear
@geg6: @Michael Bersin: Agreed. As part of tiny minority, I need all the temporary allies I can get.
But it’s gonna take a lot more than foot-washing at Pride for me to even think about an iota of forgiveness. It’s gonna take working to make amends — specifically fighting to undo the damage he wrought, and enabled others to do.
TBone
@rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun): thank you. I read all over the map all day every day and was underwhelmed – of course I’ve heard of this fucking guy, but I was unaware that he had any real influence except possibly with the cult.
Anytime someone wakes up is cause for celebration but I’m not sure the people who need to see this ever will. Ever.
Most of what I’ve ever seen with regard to this guy is simply mockery.
Chet Murthy
@Sister Golden Bear: “It’s gonna take working to make amends”
Amen. Amen. I figure, we can all say a nice word for him in the House of Commons, eh?
FDRLincoln
I’ll take any ally I can get in the fight against fascism, even reluctant, late, and temporary ones.
M31
I know I’m doing something right when I’ve never even heard of him.
but also, Christ what an asshole
TBone
@FDRLincoln: point taken, you are correct and I’m revising my grumpy judgement. Any port in a storm.
TBone
@M31: 😎😆
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I’m willing to welcome honest converts no matter how they got there. If this is a true awakening for French welcome aboard. Took you long enough but better later than never. I CAN believe he never noticed the racism in his church until he adopted a black child…people can be pretty blind to what’s around them when it’s not directly affecting them.
It should not be surprising though. I’m currently reading Timothy Egan’s Fever in the Heartland about the growth of the Klan in the Midwest (especially Indiana) and elsewhere in the North and West during the 1920s. White protestant churches were hotbeds of Klan activity. Everything they’re saying now they said back then…in addition to being racist they were virulently anti-immigration, at least regarding “those countries” which were poor Catholic European ones – Slavic, Italy and Ireland. One tidbit I learned is that Notre Dame’s mascot/moniker – the “fighting Irish” was given to them after Notre Dame students chased a Klan rally out of South Bend. It was not an entirely peaceful chasing.
I honestly am aghast at how little a lot of these people seem to know of the world. I’ve traveled widely but even when I was in high school, before ever having set foot overseas (I’d been to Canada but I grew up in Michigan so that wasn’t a huge trip, or culture shock), I knew why people in the US weren’t adopting kids from Western Europe…and it’s because the standard of living there is just as high or higher than in the US. Whereas in countries with desperately poor people kids are available for adoption because their families can’t afford to feed them or in some cases parental mortality is high. How people in these churches can be so ignorant in this day and age that they can’t work that out I really don’t understand. I know Trump is just as dumb…he actually asked why we’re not getting a bunch of Norwegian immigrants rather than the Hispanic/Latinos coming up from the South…he apparently doesn’t know that Norway has as high or higher a standard of living as the US, also that the population isn’t very large. Because he’s a fucking ignoramus. Apparently all of his followers are just as dim.
Hopefully French is a true convert and can maybe help convert some of his former associates too. That needs to happen because while we may or may not hold enough of a majority to keep winning elections the more people that move to our side the better. Having a nation closely divided between belief in democracy, love and tolerance, racial equality and science on the one hand and the opposite of that on the other is pretty harrowing. I’d rather the latter group shrink considerably and people like French converting, and maybe bringing some of their former fellow travelers along in that conversion…it’s the easiest way to a less harrowing future.
wjca
I’d guess it was the former. It was just a piece of everyday background noise that he never noticed.
Not that uncommon. Ask someone who grew up in an urban area about the first time they got out in the wilds. To the silence (even with all the sounds of nature, it’s quieter). And their reaction, when they got back to the city, to all the noises they never noticed before.
The fact that he chose to adopt a black child, without realizing what would happen to her, suggests that he wasn’t racist himself. Just oblivious to it in his environment. We may think it’s blatantly obvious in the environment he was from. But that’s from a very different perspective.
But the right choice, hard as it is, is to welcome them into the fold. Because, after all, our country needs a lot of people to make that leap — like 1/3 of the population. And the ones that do have a far better handle than we ever will on how to make it happen. We need to sell a viewpoint, not just vent our (understandable) frustrations.
Michael Bersin
@John S.:
Bingo!
It’s actually fascinating to hear people talk about Jews when they don’t know you’re Jewish.
I’m at the age where when they start in I immediately state, “I’m Jewish.” Their reaction varies depending on what they were probably going to say…
Kelly
I regard those who recover from bigotry much the same as those who recover from substance abuse. Or like my nephew who did time for armed robbery and has been a hard working carpenter for many years since he got out. Welcoming forgiveness.
Another Scott
@rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun): Made me look…
Zanzu.NO:
Travel.State.gov:
It doesn’t sound like the process is easy or common. I would ass-u-me that the number of kids adopted from Norway to the USA is around zero unless the parents have dual citizenship or similar corner-cases.
Too many Americans think that everyone on the planet wants to come here, when lots and lots of places are filled with people who are quite happy where they are…
Cheers,
Scott.
TBone
OT Mood adjustment watching Leslie Caron in ‘Fanny ‘ – so beautifully done and Fanny wins at a time when people thought winning wasn’t possible (unwed pregnancy). Set in the French seaside port of Marseilles. I am also a sucker for the French accents in the film, plus the soft heart and gentle ways of the Maurice Chevalier character. Performance by Charles Boyer is the cherry on top!
Aziz, light!
I’ve been hanging around here since the mid-oughts, and remember when our esteemed blogfather had high praise for Dick Cheney.
Baby steps.
Sure Lurkalot
@PAM Dirac:
True. Note the myriads of RWers butthurt about Biden’s D-Day speech as hyper partisan anti-Trump by extolling the victory over authoritarianism and NATO.
Also, JD Vance’s obvious bullshit about Trump’s reverence for the greatest generation.
Try on that fascism shoe, folks, you’ll see it’s a perfect fit
Sirkowski
For some reason his wife follows me on Twitter.
taumaturgo
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/04/898574852/its-more-than-racism-isabel-wilkerson-explains-america-s-caste-system
An important difference between racism and classism.
TBone
@Aziz, light!: 👍😆😍
FDRLincoln
It is not that I truly trust French or quickly forgive him. But people like French sometimes do make a legitimate broadening of view…Jen Rubin and Tom Nichols come to mind as examples. Maybe French will follow through and maybe he won’t. But right now he is against Trump, is becoming aware of the gaps in his own worldview, and that helps us.
M31
@FDRLincoln:
you bet!
I mean, Liz Cheney has horrible views, so does Mitt Romney, etc. etc., but if they will help push back against the fash, that’s great.
I mean, FDR allied with Stalin against Hitler. LOL I wonder if Mr. French would like that comparison. Or else that we (the actual anti-racist anti-fascist pro-human well-being ones) are like the jealous non-prodigal son, who stayed home and was good and didn’t go off to the fleshpots? Did he get any yummy fatted calf? Oh no, only the one who saw the light at the last minute. LOL maybe Mr. Religious Dude will get that one. (I know, Jesus accepts all comers, so maybe I I shouldn’t say “Christ, what an asshole” but I bet Jesus wanted to say it a few times, if he was fully human as they say :-) )
Thus endeth the lesson.
Sister Golden Bear
@John S.: I’m not entirely surprised, I’ve seen the dynamic before. When there’s only a few members of a particular minority group, they get classified as “non-threatening oddities.” It’s one way rural queers survive.
Which is not to say that the lily-white cis-het majority doesn’t hold racist and/or queer/trans phobic beliefs. It’s just that “our” (insert minority group here), i.e. people they personally know, tend to get considered one of the “good ones” not one of those people.
It’s when the numbers of a minority group rises — whether in reality or perception* — that’s when they get targeted.
*IIRC, there’s surveys showing the public believes that a quarter of the population is LGBTQ+ when in reality we’re only 5% of the population. (Albeit about 15% of those 18-24 identify as LGBTQ+.)
Chet Murthy
@taumaturgo: Um, I don’t think she’d call “caste” the same as “classism”. And she’s talking about caste in that interview. I think she’s accurate, too.
wjca
Wonderful as that would be. Critical even. What will be even more important is if he peels away people from that subculture. Because the RWNJs are correct on one thing: we need some serious changes to our national culture. Political progress is just one piece of that.
Look at it this way. Is it better to have things happen because the law mandates it? Or because the population as a whole wants them to happen?
As any anthropologist who has studied culture change (raises hand tentatively) will tell you, most cultures change constantly. But deliberately getting one to change in a particular way is extremely difficult.
David_C
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Egan’s book is truly fascinating. Blows apart the argument that Republicans have alays been against the Klan.
Jackie
Someone on the earlier thread asked if Lindsey had been heard from lately. He spoke this morning on CBS:
Needless to say, his remarks were not kindly received.
Biden and McCain are both privately saddened, and wondering “What the hell happened to the man we once loved and respected?”
Myself? TCFG has some heavy blackmail insurance over Lindsey’s head.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Barbara: Truth! My father is first generation on both his mom and dads side. She was French and he was German while my mothers father was born in Quebec to a single mother, my mothers mother was from Maine and had French Canadian roots as well.
Chet Murthy
@Jackie: Nobody who ever got taken to the emergency room for a self-inflicted wound has *ever* called the surgery to fix ’em up a “failure”.
Omnes Omnibus
There once was a man who ran a right wing blog. Let’s call him John G. Cole (just to have a name for him). One day while being a right winger, he came across something that was a bridge to far for him. It started him down a journey of examining his priors, and became a liberal. This doesn’t happen to everyone, and it is reasonable to look askance at late changers and wonder why it took so long. I would say that we wait to see where they end up before praising or condemning them.
Also, if it helps us in November, I’ll take it.
Betty Cracker
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: What you said. I know something about being oblivious to things, having grown up around Confederate monuments, flags, etc., that were such a familiar part of the landscape for decades that I didn’t see them. French doesn’t get a cookie. He’s not special. But welcome aboard all the same.
Sister Golden Bear
@Chet Murthy:
Agreed. Although obviously caste isn’t mutually exclusive with other forms or bigotry and/or systematic oppressions (i.e. racism, sexist, religious intolerances, homo/trans phobia, etc.).
But thinking explicitly about how caste works in the U.S. does help explain things like why white women support Trump at higher rates than non-white women. They’re subordinate to white men, but their desire to preserve their place in the caste system outweighs any frustrations they may have about sexism.
John S.
@Michael Bersin:
I usually do the same now, but sometimes I let it go on for a bit depending on the circumstances.
When I went to the UK with one of my best friends who is British back in the early 2000s, we went to a party at the house of an old friend of his. He was your typical working class, white Englishman.
After many libations, the Jewish jokes came out. I sat quietly for a while, and chuckled occasionally so as not to let the cat out of the bag. I motioned to my friend not to say anything.
Finally, I asked the host “Have you ever met any Jews?” to which he responded “No”. I then informed him “Now you have!” with a big shit-eating grin. After a brief moment of awkwardness, things actually went very well. 🙂
Kent
His entire denomination was founded on hate. They severed from the mainstream Presbyterian denomination over hatred of gays and LGBT people. Much in the same manner as how the Southern Baptist church severed from the mainstream Baptist church over support for slavery. The only difference is that the Baptists beat them to it by a century or so
To act surprised when the hate comes for you is the worst form of dipshittery. He would have been perfectly comfortable with that church if they had just kept their hate focused where it belonged. On the icky gays and trans folk.
Mr. Bemused Senior
It’s all too easy to forget when we talk about millions of voters that each one of them is a person. I am no expert at predicting what will move enough votes to add up to a win.
When it comes to individuals, that sums up my view too. I posted the wisdom of Cantra yos’Phelium once before,
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Another Scott: We adopted from South Africa. Even there the kids available for international adoption are those for whom they can’t find domestic adoptive parents. But because of the massive income/wealth inequality there and the fact that it’s a far less prosperous country than Norway the proportion of kids that can’t find adoptive parents in country is much higher. Also the proportion of families that can’t afford a mouth to feed is much higher than in Norway or elsewhere in Western Europe where it’s pretty much nil. Also it’s far more populous and has a higher fertility rate than Norway so there are more kids.
I went to an evangelical church growing up. It took decades for me to pick up on the racism for the simple reason that there weren’t any non-white members of the congregation (should have been a clue but I didn’t think about it) so the subject rarely if ever came up at church functions. I get how one could be clueless about it until suddenly you bring your black child to church.
And it’s funny what you don’t think about until suddenly it affects you and yours. A real trivial example – I have a George Washington Mount Vernon snow globe. I bought it because on a visit I saw it in the gift shop and thought I need a snow globe for Christmas kitsch, and I thought hey this is pretty patriotic and not something everyone has. It wasn’t until we adopted our child that I thought gee, is it really appropriate for me to have a snow globe that commemorates a slave owner?
John S.
@Sister Golden Bear:
That’s a very interesting perspective. I honestly had never thought of it in those terms, but it makes sense. I have been a harmless oddity my entire life!
ETA: I really enjoy your contributions, and I have been coming here for a long time (since before Cole’s conversion).
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@David_C: Yup. Also striking is how that Stephenson guy was so much like Trump from the cheap conman patter to the rape and abuse of women. It’s like it all happened before, exactly a century ago. Like to the last detail.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@wjca: I see we were saying pretty much the same thing at the same time.
Kent
It is kind of like how so many people are trying to become Trump’s VP. You know you will be continually humiliated in that position, and have no actual power. And you will no doubt be diminished by the experience as has every other Trump sycophant. So why???
Chet Murthy
@Sister Golden Bear: And this is why one of the prerequisites for being a “good minority” in the US is that you must exhibit all the racisms of the white caste — gotta be a bigot toward Black people. Others have written that Koreans are often bigoted toward Black people. So also are South Asians [I’m one].
Kent
Well, not zero. There are still actual family adoptions. But those are different. For example, friend of mine from the Peace Corps ended up marrying a Norwegian engineer who she met while working in Mozambique. They lived for a while in Norway and then back in the US and ended up adopting the daughter of his sister after she died of cancer and brought her to the US. I guess they also fall into the dual-citizen category.
But American strangers arranging an adoption of some random Norwegian orphan? Nope, doesn’t happen. Norway also has a population of just 4.3 million. So about the same as metro Seattle. And it trends elderly. So the number of actual orphans in Norway is infinitesimal.
smith
@Kent: Why? There’s a pretty good chance he’d die in office, or that you’d at least be able to invoke the 25th on his ass.
Kent
I’m just pointing out that the reason why white fundie women stick with sexist ideologies is the same as why people clamor to be Trump’s VP. It is the proximity to power.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@David_C: Also, not sure if you’ve gotten to this bit but White Christian Nationalists tend to favor the KJV of the bible as the “one true version” and Egan mentions in passing that the KJV was the version sanctioned by the Klan because it was the protestant rather than Catholic version. In the 1920s I don’t think they had the later versions of the bible that are available today. But the white supremacist of today can’t break from the Klan-endorsed version.
All that stuff must have just been there all these many decades hiding in plain site only to erupt again when conditions got favorable.
TBone
@Mr. Bemused Senior: that aiming part is the whole shebang!!!
Josie
@bg: Thanks for this. You have helped me to understand a parable that never really made sense to me and have also given me a new perspective on later comers to the liberal way of thinking. I never cease to learn new ways of seeing life from reading this blog.
Kelly
Growing up in very homogeneously white rural Oregon I didn’t notice my community’s bigotry until I left for college.
pacem appellant
Penance before forgiveness. Juck David French.
Luminous Muse
I’ve been reading David French at the NYT for a while. Like Jennifer Rubin and Tom Nichols he seems to have truly seen the light. And given his background he’s remarkably tolerant, perhaps even kind. (I’m no Christian but I believe kindness is one of their actual virtues.)
We need (a lot) more of him.
Citizen Alan
@Another Scott: The reason why I cannot reject Christianity as a concept completely is that I truly believe that if everyone followed the dictates of “Love thy neighbor as thyself” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” we would be living in a literal Utopia. But we don’t because not only doesn’t everyone believe that, but so-called Christians are the worst about mouthing the words that they don’t believe. I don’t believe even 1 Evangelical in 100 even tries to treat other people as they would want to be treated.
Jackie
@Citizen Alan: Buddhism and Islamism also teach these values.
Citizen Alan
@bg:
You must have gotten some special extended Director’s Cut of that story. Because the one in my Bible ends with the father lecturing the son who was actually faithful and did not run off to squander his half of the family fortune on hookers and blow. Not a word about whether the spoiled brat changed his ways. nor any sign that the brother’s reconciled.
I have always hated the story of the Prodigal Son because I have never been able to ignore the story’s complete dismissal of the feelings of the other son, the one who’s spent years toiling in his father’s fields, only for daddy to throw a party in honor of the return of the fail-son.
Citizen Alan
@Sister Golden Bear: I have not heard that study. But I have read somewhere about a virulent white racist who participated in an LSD study in prison and completely abandoned his bigoted views in response to a trip he had.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@David_C: I have to read that book at some point…the church I grew up in was an evangelical protestant church in Grand Rapids, MI…I don’t think the same church Alberta was a member of but in the same vein. Although my church, when I was there, was not very political. I lived there for a couple years between college and grad school and went to a Baptist church near where my parents lived…once. I just wasn’t in to driving cross-town to our church so I gave it a shot. It was bug fuck crazy. The preacher went on a rant about putting spotted owls above human beings that morphed into an explanation that people were starving in India because the religion said they couldn’t eat cows. Never darkened the door of that place again.
But there was a church across the street from there that was far more welcoming and the pastor was committed to keeping politics out of religion. In fact one sunday he addressed it head on by saying that some of his paritioners were complaining that he was too liberal and others that he was too conservative but that if you were reading your politics or the opposite of your politics into his sermons you were doing it wrong. He wasn’t trying to be political but if your politics disagreed with his sermons then he said maybe you should think about your politics and whether they’re entirely consistent with your Christianity.
bjacques
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: My girlfriend is Bene Gesserit, so the Orange Catholic Bible is the only version that counts.
Seriously, French is welcome, but he starts in debt. He owes us 100 Nazi scalps. Put that platform and Harvard Law education to good use, starting now, whatever the personal cost. His daughter will thank him.
Jay C
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Well, there’s always the irony factor to consider: supposedly, it was going out in the snow that gave Washington the throat infection that killed him.
geg6
@Citizen Alan:
Same! Got in trouble in CCD class back in second grade over my questions about why this is supposed to be an edifying story.
Layer8Problem
@bjacques: ” . . . the Orange Catholic Bible is the only version that counts.”
That’s the one Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society are pushing, right? With extra Falangism?
TBone
@bjacques: I like the cut of your jib, Lt. Aldo Raine.
cain
@Omnes Omnibus:
What a great conversion it was – this blog has raised money like gangbusters helping pets, people, and empathic and compassionate political campaigns.
Citizen Alan
@Sister Golden Bear:
My personal belief is that the percentage of LGBTQ+ Americans is rising and will continue to rise simply because of the B in that acronym. As homosexuality in general becomes more social acceptable, it also becomes easier to acknowledge one’s own sexual fluidity. Young men and women today are identifying as bisexual who, fifty years ago, would have denied having any same sex attractions at all and, twenty-five years ago, would have said something like “I’m completely straight, but if George Clooney/Charlize Theron walked into the room …”
I had a friend back in Mississippi who once privately told me he was bi. And by “bi,” I mean he admitted to one single same-sex encounter with his roommate at the time and “it was … alright.” AFAIK, he never had any other SS encounters and two years later, married a divorced woman with two kids and big, Baptist hair. And he became a cop. So I assume that was the end of his “bisexuality.”
Chet Murthy
@Citizen Alan: @Sister Golden Bear: I read an article somewhere that cited stats starting with the Silent Generation, that LGBTQ self-identification has risen pretty much monotonically, generation-by-generation. And I remember reading a WaPo article several years ago citing a big, big survey that found that in Gen Z, it was up near 30%. Which …. Gynormous. And yeah, a lot of that was from “B” and nonbinary folks. Lots of AFAB identifying at “B” and nonbinary. But even besides that, the rate of self-identification of other letters has also risen, generation-by-generation.
It’s almost as if there was massive societal pressure to identify as hetero, and over the generations that pressure has slowly, slowly let off. It’s still there, but nowhere near as heavy as it used to be.
Citizen Alan
@Kent: There is a certain cold rationality to the viewpoint of conservative women. And that thinking is as follows: In a world ruled by a white supremacist patriarchy, I will be subordinate to white men, but superior to everyone else. In a world of equality, I will be equal to white men, but also equal to everyone else. Therefore, equality diminishes my status.
Rand Careaga
@Michael Bersin:
It can also be amusing in cases where someone is assumed to be part of an in-group. Years ago a friend of mine, then in his sixties and sporting a very full beard, attended a conference in Salt Lake City. One of the other attendees was a Mormon bishop from Rexburg, Idaho, and that worthy somehow took the impression that my chum was a co-religionist (it was probably the “Mormon patriarch” facial hair). “Yeah, we had a gentile family move in, but we run ’em out of town.”
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
I did Nazi this coming
Geoduck
I do harbor some curiosity as to what prompted this.. individual.. to adapt a child from Ethiopia.
David_C
@geg6: the Parable of the Prodigal Son isn’t about the distribution of scarce resources, but about the abundant love of the Father for the Son. It follows the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin Parables for a reason. As the Father shows grace to the Son, grace that has not been earned, we should do also for someone who comes back into the fold. So many teachings of Jesus note that we ain’t so perfect, either.
Yeah, I taught Sunday School for 20 years. :-)
Gloria DryGarden
@Citizen Alan: Oh! I didn’t understand, before. So that’s what it is. Dang! Takes my breath away.
Status! I forget how important that is amongst some people.
Gloria DryGarden
@gene108: that would be cool. Like frank Schaefer a for wr evangelical, now pro choice, revealing the inner workings of far right evangelical agendas.
Can you write to French, and suggest it?
Interesting to me that he’s capable of feeling shame. It’s a good step. There are people that continue to be shameless and vile.
suzanne
@Geoduck: There’s a lot of white people who adopt internationally, which usually means interracially. Infertility is a thing. For some Christians, it’s high-status to adopt children from other countries and bring them up Christian.
Amy Coney Barrett let the mask slip when discussing “the domestic supply of infants” during the Dobbs arguments. The right wing wants to force young women to bear children they don’t want, and then pressure them into surrendering them for adoption to bougie white couples.
Gloria DryGarden
Mister mix
I adore your word choices
So -called Christians
Sky fairy.
I can be spiritually inclined, and enjoy mystical teachings of venerated teachers, yet be totally against the ways religion gets used for hate, power, dominance, profit, control and inhumane harms to so many. Twisted.
(like a twist tie used as a garrote around the necks of “other” people’s lives)
Michael Bersin
@Rand Careaga:
I remember an editorial cartoon from decades ago about the sectarian strife in Northern Ireland. The illustration had the two sides, armed, on either side of the frame with a Hasid walking down the middle of the street. The caption was something along the lines of “Better hold your fire, we don’t want to complicate things.”
Villago Delenda Est
@suzanne: This is the dirty little secret of the Forced Birthers. Those sluts should be forced to bear white babies for infertile “Christians” to adopt.
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: A lot of Jesus’s parables and sayings are about how you shouldn’t let your sense of morality or fairness get in the way of being generous and kind. And he seems to conceive of God as manifesting that kind of generosity in the extreme to the point that it can seem unfair to us. I’m an atheist myself but I think those lessons are interesting and challenging ones to think about. I can get lost lately in setting myself up as judge over the world.
RevRick
@gene108:
@bg:
I’m inclined to offer a bit more grace and forgiveness to French than the OP, but I understand the rage behind the desire to see him cast off into the outer darkness. Tim Alberta wrote an entire book The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, which amounts to expressions of surprise and sorrow about leopard face-eating in their churches.
What’s somewhat telling in Alberta’s book is his conflation of white evangelicals with Americans. There is a world of difference between them and black evangelicals, who are just as American.
The not so dirty secret about white Evangelicals is that they are the descendants of those who vociferously defended slavery, advocated for treasonous secession and Civil War, and supported Jim Crow and its violence. Those photographs of mobs gathered around lynchings are pictures of 19th and early 20th century white evangelicals.
White Evangelicalism is rooted in barbarism, but there’s been a concerted effort to bury that truth, and some have indeed repudiated that past, e.g. former President Carter. Robert P. Jones, author of White Too Long, recalls that his journey away from evangelicalism began with the shock of discovering in the family Bible that a great something grandfather had owned slaves.
Matt McIrvin
@Sister Golden Bear: I remember how 1970s mass media could openly talk about trans people (though in this kind of gross voyeuristic way) whereas homosexuality seemed much more taboo. I think it was because trans-ness was seen as a rare oddity whereas everyone knew gay people were common enough to seem scary. Now that it’s clearer how many trans people there are, there’s this freakout.
rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m so old I remember this conservative man! I started reading BJ when I was one, too. The bridge too far for me was the 2004 marriage equality madness. Once those scales fell off, I was an “Obama isn’t liberal enough but I still love him” Dem by 2008.
Being a young queer man in college helped, too.
rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)
@cain: this blog and its jackals helped me find a home for my Tado when my illness became too much for me!
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@trollhattan: as long as The Recreational Abortionists open for them.
Sister Golden Bear
@Omnes Omnibus: Thia hypothetical John G. Cole (as far as I know) never did anything wrong to actively hurt people like, or encourage others to do so. French did. So the bar is a higher.
Will I welcome French for his change of views and as an ally (albeit conditionally, and potentially temporary). But as others said, he also brings a debt. One that I’m not going to overlook until he’s made serious attempts to rectify it.
As part of a tiny mini group I need all the allies I can get — even if they’re problematic — but that pragmatism doesn’t mean I automatically forget and forgive.
Kent
Interesting article. But she is writing more about caste than class. Which is something still different.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Barbara: This is true in so very many ways.
I spent several years around Southern Baptists when that sect was the driving force behind FundiEvangelical Xtianism. I have seen a cultural blindness in operation when the subject resembles “normal” to the viewers. Out, happy me was much more welcome among them than confused, uncertain, closeted me, for example.
French seems to have discovered that compassion and forgiveness, two very Christian concepts, are not part of modern FundiEvangelical Xtianism. And as so often happens with Reichwingnuts, the discovery only comes when the judgment and hostility become personal, when his own situation didn’t match the expectations of his congregation.
I would comment on regionality playing a part but I am no longer sure that is a factor.
jonas
@suzanne: Coney Barrett herself has (iirc) at least one adopted child from Haiti, FWIW. As someone above pointed out, interracial/overseas adoptions are a thing with evangelical Christians in many places — an outward display of multicultural Christian charity, though as French’s experience shows, it’s one that can also bring out the racism in a lot of them. Recall the whisper campaign as well against the McCains’ adopted Bangladeshi child by some rightwing assholes (but I repeat myself).
French is on a journey, as they say, and if it’s opening his mind and heart to more voices on the left, that’s great. I’ll also add that he and his wife Nancy helped expose a huge sex abuse scandal at a major evangelical Christian summer camp in Missouri a few years ago. I think that plunge into the darkness of the evangelical-political industrial complex did a lot to start making the scales fall from the Frenchs’ eyes.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@bg: The fact that he’s staying with the denomination that fed his Reichwingnutsery is not a good sign for his awakening to its flaws.
jonas
I was wondering the same thing when I read today about a Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, (yes, *northern Idaho*), jury that returned a $1 million defamation verdict against a bloviating rightwing fuckstick who tried to claim a local drag queen had been exposing themselves to children during a performance at a local pride event. It was a total lie, got exposed in court, and a local jury found for the drag queen. Regardless of why they did it, you love to see it.
rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun)
@Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq): It takes time. This former Southern Baptist took 15 years to become an Episcopalian.
cain
@rebelsdad (aka texasboyshaun): Glad it happened in the end
It took some time for Cole to come around as well.
Burnspbesq
Mix is just soooo fucking pure, he gets to be the self-appointed arbiter of who’s pure enough to sit at the Kewl Kidz Table.
I call down the wrath of efgoldman on that bullshit.
in this of all years, can you not see the abject stupidity of alienating potential allies?
Miss Bianca
@M31:
The image of Christ saying, “Christ, what an asshole” is for some reason warming the cockles of my cold, cold heart.
Timill
@Miss Bianca:
Ask…
(I hope it’s public…)
Chris T.
@John S.:
Probably a case of “invisible, hence no complaints”. But there are more here than you might think … just not enough to sustain proper places for bagels and delicatessens, which I miss from my East Coast days. :-)
(At least Berkeley had one proper deli, Saul’s.)
Miss Bianca
@Timill: LOL!!
fancycwabs
When I ran for congress in 2022 (TN-06) I participated in a candidates forum at Lipscomb (French is on the faculty, but I can’t confirm he attended) where a half-dozen Republican candidates for TN-05 (one of whom participated in the J6 insurrection) all lined up and one after another said that Donald Trump was without sin, never made mistakes, and they could, in the words of Pontius Pilate, find no fault in this man.
I’m surprised it took French another two years to recognize that it’s a new religion supplanting Christianity.