Comments on: American Taliban? Let me react to that

By: Patrick (Gryph_

Patrick (Gryph_ — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 19:33:02 +0000

“Would it be enough, for example, to argue that there are a great many — but not necessarily all or even most — Christian organizations, enterprises, leaders, etc. that have such an explicit anti-gay agenda?”
Those Christian organizations who choose not to at least endorse an explicit anti-gay agenda usually find themselves put outside the Christian mainstream quite quickly. The become known as Christians in name only. They are not considered “Real Christians” any more. For example, the Episcopal and UCC Churches. The censure and excomunication of Catholic priests who ministered to gay and lesbian groups of Catholics with out requiring that they “change” their sexual orientation. The priests, for the most part, didn’t even endorse homosexuality as valid, they just treated it as no worse or better than any other sin.
My other point is that even when their are Christian organizations or groups that are not viruently anti-gay, they are not the voice of Christianity being heard in America. Like it or not, Falwell, Dobson, Robertson, and the whole slimy crew are what represent Christianity today. If you don’t like that, then get better people on the job.
But don’t excuse them by saying they don’t represent “real” Christianity. Just the sheer size alone of some of these groups says that for the most part, they do, and they have real power. The Arlington group, for example, meets weekly with the White House to plan strategies.
Read some of the articles at my blog below and then tell me how unreasonable I’m being.
http://www.gryphmon.com/2005/06/trilogy_of_terr.html
The original topic of this entry was whether Christianity is like the Taliban. Have you noticed that persecuting gay and lesbian people seems to be the only thing that Christendom, Islam, and Judaism seem to be in complete agreement on on?
http://www.365gay.com/newscon05/06/063005Jerusalem.htm
The Arlington Group, when it formed it’s anti-gay marriage coalition, even welcomed an Islamic group for a while that had ties to terrorism. They only withdrew after we started making noise about it.

By: philosopher

philosopher — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 04:46:47 +0000

Patrick, I’ve got a modicum of sympathy for the line you’re trying to run here, but you still seem to be staging your arguments at a rather unsustainable level of generalization. E.g., “If you walk into any Christian bookstore, sometimes you find a whole wall devoted to combating the “The Homosexual Menace.” I have indeed seen things similar to this (though never with quite that title), but I’ve also seen a good number of Christian or Christian-inclined bookstores that had nowhere near such a large anti-homosexual presence (indeed, that had no such presence that I noted, but I wasn’t looking for it either). Is there no way to carry out your argument in a way that is more defensible, but still hits significant targets? Would it be enough, for example, to argue that there are a great many — but not necessarily all or even most — Christian organizations, enterprises, leaders, etc. that have such an explicit anti-gay agenda?

By: Patrick (Gryph)

Patrick (Gryph) — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 03:27:35 +0000

“Or Patrick, who’s making vast generalizations and accusations about what Christians supposedly think and do?”

“vast generalizations” ?
Sorry Eric, but unlike the mysterious “Homosexual Agenda” that I hear so many ranting about, but that no one can ever actually produce for me, the anti-gay Christian agenda is quite clearly and specifically written down and widely publicized.
If you walk into a gay & lesbian bookstore, you are not going to find many books on how to convert straights to gays, or how to outlaw Christianity or how to raise gay children or how straight people are destroying gay marriage in the Netherlands. You are not even going to see books that promote outlawing the straight-favored “missionary” sexual position from being practiced in the privacy of straight people’s own bedrooms. Nope, won’t see ‘em.
However, If you walk into any Christian bookstore, sometimes you find a whole wall devoted to combating the “The Homosexual Menace”. The anti-gay Christian book and lecture circuit industry is really quite large. Probably larger than Planned Parenthoods abortion industry.
Christians have also made sure to have their agenda incorporated into the written guidelines of whatever organizations they have joined or taken over, such as the GOP and it’s little hate-filled platform agenda passed at their last convention.
You also can’t listen to any of Christian radio stations in the neighborhood for even half a day without hearing some kind of anti-gay diatribe blasted out at the faithful at some point.
And of course, there are the huge Christian organizations and Church’s that devote so much of their time and money to the subject, such as the Arlington group, or the New Life Church, and of course the usual suspects, FOF, CWA, CTV, CBN, The Southern Baptist convention and and leadership, the Catholic Church etc. The scale and budgets of their operations vastly outnumber anything that gays and lesbians can come up with.
So if you want to tell me how its all just a big misunderstanding and that you are really being victimized and that these people are not really “Christians” or that they are not really speaking for Christians, go right ahead, but unfortunately I won’t be able to hear you because you are completely drowned out by the non-stop invective that spews out from these other organizations.
I suppose you could also tell me that when the Pope claims that I am “intrinsically evil” or that my getting married is an “ideology of evil” that he is just pulling my leg.
And you may want to remind me about how Christians are so being victimized in this country. I always have trouble realizing that when I remember that Christians now largely control at least two out of the three branches of our government, as well as a large number of the state legislatures, and have successfully passed anti-gay amendments in whatever state they cared to try in. Christians have even gotten the Governor of Texas to suggest that gay veterans are not welcome in his state, no matter what personal sacrifices they may have made, you know, to protect your freedom to treat them like crap.
So go ahead, tell me how Christians are so horribly subjected to discrimination in today’s world. Tell me how I’m inventing “vast generalizations” and conspiracies. And welcome to the Culture of Victimhood.

By: RiShawn Biddle

RiShawn Biddle — Fri, 08 Jul 2005 03:23:32 +0000

Eric:
Patrick’s characterizations are so extreme that they’re not even worth much in the way of comment. One can be anti-gay marriage (or pro-sodomy laws) and not exactly be interested in shipping off homosexuals to a concentration camp. All that is a matter of whether one believes that gays are as entitled to the rights and privileges extended to all Americans or not. Next.

By: Eric Seymour

Eric Seymour — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 21:17:05 +0000

You have absolutely not the slightest idea how I live my day-to-day life, yet you feel entitled to judge me evil.
Hmm… Who’s perpetuating stereotypes, bigotry, and prejudice here? Jonathan, who has merely defended the right of people of the Judeo-Christian faith to believe that homosexuality is–among many other behaviors–sinful? Or Patrick, who’s making vast generalizations and accusations about what Christians supposedly think and do?

By: Patrick (Gryph_

Patrick (Gryph_ — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 21:04:58 +0000

“That is absurd. You are a person with a lifestyle that a significant number of Christians believe to be, in religious terms, sinful–much in the same way that some believe fornication, adultery, and cheating on taxes is sinful. Get over it! Not everyone in the world approves of everyone else’s conduct.”
You prove my point exactly with your comment about “lifestyle”. I have a life, not a “lifestyle”. You have absolutely not the slightest idea how I live my day-to-day life, yet you feel entitled to judge me evil.
To you I am a behavior, not an identity. You see us as straight people acting bad, rather than simply being who we are.
You of course, can go anywhere and claim you are straight with impunity. You insist however that we have to somehow prove that our identity is gay, rather than that we are are merely “acting” gay. And then when we give you that truth you refuse to accept it.
The right to self-determination is a fundamental human right that you take for granted. You do not grant us the recognition of that human right, so therefore you don’t grant us the title of “Human”.
Human beings also form families by getting married. You do not recognize that we are capable of this, or if we do, you want to outlaw them. So once again, you deny us the title of “Human”.
Bigotry and prejudice are easy to spot when people are wearing white sheets over their heads. Its a lot harder when it’s so inter-woven within a culture of denial. Your kind of prejudice has been a part of the Christian religion for so long that you simply can’t see the forest for the trees.
Christians have been sticking it to gay and lesbian people for thousands of years now. When Christians have a few thousand years of treating us fairly and decently under their belt, then they can criticize our “lifestyles”. Until then they should look to their own marriages and families before denigrating and spitting on ours.

By: C M

C M — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 20:56:17 +0000

“you might find that most of them are actually regular people who can even treat human beings like human beings.”
and hopefully they’ll keep to themselves their beliefs that you’re damned for all of eternity while professing their love (coupled with extreme distaste) for you. or maybe they’ll tell you how much they love you while they enact legislation that keeps you from seeing your sick partner on their deathbed. or maybe they’ll show their love for you by publicly ridiculing your belief systems. all the while ignoring biblical refutations of money lending, divorce, and eating practices.

By: Patrick (Gryph_

Patrick (Gryph_ — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 17:59:23 +0000

“Is agreeing that homosexuality should be criminalize, and criticizing a Supreme Court opinion that decriminalizes it, analogous to being a member of the Taliban?”
In the sense that it seeks to enshrine Biblical law into secular, civil law, yes. These are laws that seek to regulate private behavior, rather than public actions. There is no possible justification for them other than “because the Bible said so”, that can be based on the “public good”. And the lack of recognition for any division between public and private areas subject to the dominion of law is a fundamental principle of Islamic Sharia.
While I would much rather live under a Christian tyranny than an Islamic one, it’s still tyranny nonetheless and cannot be rationalized or explained away as anything but.
You have argued that Christians do not want the eradication of gay and lesbian people, but you have not acknowledged that Christians do not respect gay and lesbian people AS people. The “Christian Agenda” toward gays and lesbians who live in this country is not brimming over with sweetness and light.
At best you view us as mentally ill, at worst, as morally degenerate animals. Neither of which, in your eyes, are capable of forming a relationship equivalent in value to your own as a couple.
You do not respect us, or our relationships. You deny that we exist by constantly portraying us as straight people engaging in homosexual behavior, rather than actually being homosexual. And you do not respect our families, in fact, you deny that we even have families or if they do exist, you want to destroy them.
President Bush said the other day that he wants to amend the Constitution to defend the family, but that act would almost permanently enshrine in the highest law of the land the belief that gay and lesbian people do not have families in the first place. It permanently would place us on the outside of civil life in the US. And it will give legal foundation for whatever future restrictions you wish to place on gay and lesbian people. This is how the sodomy laws were really used. To provide justification for ripping our children out of our arms. To justify discrimination in the workplace or housing. To justify imprisonment or being sent to a mental institution for mandatory quack “cures”, including but not limited to hormone treatments, (check Alan Turing), lobotomizing, castration, etc.. The “protection of marriage” amendment is the most evil idea since Crow. And it will not protect a single marriage in this country. Not one!
The Christian agenda IS the eradication of gay and lesbian people. Perhaps not literally, but be honest. Christians want gay and lesbian people to simply go away. They don’t want to hear about homosexuality, they don’t want to admit it even exists. Christians want us excised from public life and from obtaining public recognition or validity of any kind, whether in the law, in schools, or on TV or anywhere that there is evidence that we are here.
That is why so many of the DOMA’s passed by States not only outlaw gay marriage, but deny recognition of civil unions. That is why so many Christian organizations have come out against anti-discrimination laws for the workplace or in housing.
That is why, when Christians discover they have a gay or lesbian son or daughter, they so often kick them out never to be welcomed home again, or they send them out to Christian “Love won out”, reprogramming camps where they get treated as dogs or get medicated out of their minds. Not to mention the sometimes use of electro-shock therapy. This they do to their own children. A fine example of family values, don’t you think?
All of these actions are not being taken by mass groups of atheists rampaging across the country. They are acts committed by Christians, who justify their barbarism with their religion.
Christianity as a whole simply doesn’t respect us as legitimate human beings. And that perverse belief cannot truly be justified by a few lines of text in the Bible. It really comes from a much darker place, if they were but willing to be honest enough with themselves to see it.
It’s an example of REAL moral degeneracy.

By: philosopher

philosopher — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 15:54:07 +0000

My main objection is that Kos speaks far too loosely and recklessly about the “religious right” that he is attacking.
I think that’s a fair complaint. Indeed, I spent a chunk of time yesterday googling on “American Taliban” trying to find where, if anywhere, Kos (or anyone else) defines just who they mean by it. It has seemed to me that he means, well, what I’ve interpreted it to mean upthread, but I was hoping to find something definitive showing that to be the case. And I wasn’t able to turn anything up. So, yeah, there’s certainly some vagueness in there.
Which is why, however, it’s important to apply the interpretive principle of charity I discussed above: if someone says something vague and/or ambiguous, then you should initially plump for the least bad possible interpretation of what they said — but also, of course, chastise them for their vagueness! If Jonathan’s initial post had been framed as, “look, Kos offered these comparisons without making sufficiently clear who his target is, and even though some handful of the far religious right is indeed appropriately caught by his remarks, there’s a whole lot more folks who just aren’t, and Kos really ought to be writing in a more responsible way that makes that distinction clear”, then I wouldn’t have been interested in offering much critique.

By: Eric Seymour

Eric Seymour — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 15:29:07 +0000

For the record, I find nothing controversial with phil’s point #6–a “main point” that was not clearly given by Kos until a follow-up post which I found last night. On a traditional left-right spectrum, Islamic fundamentalists are (far) to the right of American conservatives, so obviously they are closer to us than to American liberals. Furthermore, it *is* ridiculous for anyone to say that liberals are “rooting for” the terrorists. I do think many liberals have a misplaced *sympathy* for them (saying things along the lines of “you can’t blame the terrorists for attacking America when you consider the things America has done), and misguided approaches to dealing with terror.
My main objection is that Kos speaks far too loosely and recklessly about the “religious right” that he is attacking.