A Note on Conservative Values

This is fun. Peter Montgomery, for Right Wing Watch, the day after Barack Obama was re-elected in 2012:

Not only did Obama win big, but voters in Maine and Maryland embraced marriage equality, and Washington seems likely to join them. Minnesota voters rejected a Religious Right-backed attempt to put anti-gay discrimination into the state’s constitution. Tammy Baldwin was elected to the Senate, where she will be the first openly gay member.

Well before all those results were in, it was clear that the night was not going according to what Religious Right leaders had thought was God’s plan. At 10 pm, Tony Perkins and Jim Garlow held a phone call briefing for pastors. It was a very subdued affair, with representatives of the state marriage campaigns trying to sound hopeful about the then-uncalled outcomes in their states. Perkins and Garlow also held a Wednesday webcast on the “aftermath and aftershocks” as the scope of their Election Day drubbing sank in. “The problem in America is sin,” said Garlow. But, he said, “we have no problem that the next Great Awakening cannot solve.”

The tendency after an election defeat to avoid blame by casting it elsewhere was in full flower the day after the election. Rep. Jim Jordan, a Religious Right favorite, described Mitt Romney as “the most liberal Republican nominee in history” who had “waffled” on abortion, had passed a health care bill as governor, and had a hard time convincing conservatives on his commitments on taxing and spending. Perkins criticized Romney for not campaigning on issues of life, marriage, and religious liberty, even though Obama used them to appeal to his base. Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway agreed, saying Republicans had not done enough to draw the contrast on social and “moral” issues. Regarding the marriage wins, Perkins blamed Obama in part, saying the president’s policies have had “a shaping influence on the culture.” He and others also blamed marriage equality proponents’ financial advantage ....

.... Some Religious Right leaders sought solace in faith that God is ultimately in control. “America as we know it may have signed its death warrant tonight,” said Garlow during the pastors’ briefing. But not to worry, he said, nations come and go, but God’s kingdom is forever. Perkins said FRC and its allies would continue to stand strong in the face of “an increasingly hostile culture.”

Others looked forward to the next political fight. Pollster Conway predicted that 2014 would bring, like 2010’s Tea Party wave, a conservative resurgence and called for candidate recruitment to begin now. Perkins agreed that conservatives have never had a stronger “farm team” and touted potential conservative candidates for 2016, including Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Rand Paul, and Mike Pence.

Yes, indeed, a genuine Kellyanne Conway sighting, as the pollster reminded Republicans, as we hear every election, how things would go better if they would just become more misogynistic, homophobic, masculinist, Christianist, supremacist―you now, whatever counts among Republicans as family values and morality. It’s also worth noting, in addition to the farm team standouts, the presence of Tony Perkins of Family Research Council.

It’s just an interesting contrast. Kellyanne Conway, in her role as Donald Trump’s campaign manager, has undoubtedly drawn a contrast on social and moral issues. Mr. Perkins, for his part, was last heard explaining, “My personal support for Donald Trump has never been based upon shared values”.

A Timeless Conservative Priority

This is going on. You know, just so you know:

When city lawmakers in Washington, D.C., approved a new law banning discrimination on the basis of reproductive choices, much of the right was not pleased. But the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal website published a report this week that some conservative organizations are actually preparing to ignore the new policy.

Hours after the Senate allowed a controversial anti-discrimination law to officially take effect in the nation’s capital, a group of pro-life organizations released a joint statement pledging to continue operating in accordance with their beliefs – thereby putting themselves at risk of violating the law.

“Despite the enactment of this unjust law, we will continue to hire employees who share our commitment to the dignity of every member of the human family,” reads the statement released by Alliance Defending Freedom, the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Americans United for Life and Americans United for Life Action, March for Life, Concerned Women for America, the Susan B. Anthony List, the Family Research Council and the Assoc. of Christian Schools International.

The groups’ statement added, “We will not abandon the purpose of our organizations in order to comply with this illegal and unjust law. We will vigorously resist any effort under RHNDA to violate our constitutionally protected fundamental rights.”

If so, it seems an interesting showdown is on the horizon.

(Benen)

In a way, certainly this seems sudden. But asserting religious rights to make decisions for other people is the in thing to do among conservatives. There really is nothing new going on here. This is, after all, the same outlook asserting an employer’s right to interfere in doctor-patient relationships, that religious exemption paperwork is a violation of religious conscience, and a religious right to discriminate against homosexuals in the public square. Historically, this is the same outlook as any empowerment majority facing a loss of privilege; equality itself feels dangerous to them, as the unknown is almost always at least a little scary.

Something goes here about teaching an old bull new sh―

Oh, right. Anyway, you get the idea.

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Benen, Steve. “Right vows to ‘vigorously resist’ reproductive rights law”. msnbc. 7 May 2015.

—————. “At the intersection of reproductive choices and discrimination”. msnbc. 6 May 2015.

See Also

Maddow, Rachel. “Republican war on reproductive rights seen in DC bill”. The Rachel Maddow Show. msnbc. 6 May 2015.

A Rumor of War

This is what it is worth:

After Janet Porter, the creator of a new “documentary” about how the gay rights movement will outlaw Christianity, discussed her “restraining order” campaign to convince Congress to strip the Supreme Court of its authority to rule on marriage cases, Dobson said that his fellow activists “need to be realistic about what we’re up against here.”

He said that the gay rights issue has reached an unprecedented “level of intensity” and put the country on the brink of conflict: “Talk about a Civil War, we could have another one over this.”

Dobson also claimed that marriage equality will lead to the collapse of the nation: “The country can be no stronger than its families. I really believe if what the Supreme Court is about to do is carried through with, and it looks like it will be, then we’re going to see a general collapse in the next decade or two. I just am convinced of that. So we need to do everything we can to try to hold it back and to preserve the institution of marriage.”

(Tashman)

Let us be clear that there really isn’t any sort of dog-whistling going on here; James Dobson is calling for armed insurrection because he hates gay people that much.

Certes, some might try to split the hair, but “we could have another” Civil War over human rights for gay people? Really? Bigotry is that important? And, as Dobson tells the cult, the nation will collapse if the gays aren’t stopped, and “We need to do everything we can to try to hold it back and to preserve the institution of marriage.”

Which is really quite strange. Once upon a time, Dr. James Dobson was a respected author who advised Christians on how to raise their children. And it is true that his approach to raising children is not exactly healthy, but that’s the thing; he wrote in a context serving an empowerment majority, so he could spend his efforts just finding ways to tell them what they wanted to hear and crafting a pretense of professional respectability.

And when we look out at the generational cohorts, we ought not be surprised to find those sectors of our society falling behind; there is a reason these supremacists are reduced to blithering about civil war―it’s all they have left.

Then again, really? Because of gay people? Out of everything else in the world, this is what stirs American Christians to revolutionary ire?

Indeed Bizarre

Curtis M. Wong of Huffington Post brings us the headline, “Dan Savage Is Tied To University Of Oklahoma Racist Fraternity Scandal, FRC Pundit Claims”, and we’re just going to leave it at that, because, well, you know, it’s not that we would doubt Mr. Wong, it’s just that the lede―

The Family Research Council’s Ken Blackwell bizarrely pulled outspoken lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights advocate Dan Savage over into the racial controversy at University of Oklahoma’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.

―is exactly accurate insofar as this really does not make any sense.

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Wong, Curtis M. “Dan Savage Is Tied To University Of Oklahoma Racist Fraternity Scandal, FRC Pundit Claims”. The Huffington Post. 12 March 2015.

A Market Symptom

“Another thing that doesn’t work the way Tony Perkins would like: God’s favor. Unhinged religious conservatives like Perkins are always screaming that God punishes countries that embrace equality for LGBT people and showers blessings on countries that persecute LGBT people. But a quick look at the list of the worst places to be LGBT—Iran, Nigeria, Uganda, Russia, Cameroon—makes it clear that ‘shitty and fucked’ correlates strongly with ‘rabidly anti-queer.'”

―Dan Savage

Sometimes it is enough to go with, “What he said.”

And sometimes it should be enough to do so, but it might take some explaining nonetheless.

Within that subset there are occasions when one can trade such explanation for an expression of mild exasperation as if to say, “What, you need this explained?”

Okay, that is a concession worth making on this occasion: As long as people keep sending these groups enough money to keep them in business, others will point out the dangerous, uneducated excrement they produce.

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Savage, Dan. “Tony Perkins: Same-Sex Marriage Destroys Currencies”. Slog. 16 December 2014.

Something I Would Really Like to Know

Okay … so … I really need an answer to this question:

• Ex-Gay Equal Rights Now! — What does that even mean?

Brian Tashman explains:

Yesterday, American Family Radio’s Sandy Rios spoke to Ex-Gay Pride Month organizer Christopher Doyle about today’s ex-gay lobby day on Capitol Hill. Doyle, who was organizing the since-canceled Ex-Gay Pride banquet at the Family Research Council, complained in an interview with the Christian Post that “un-American” LGBT rights advocates have “shut us out,” explaining that “because of all this homo-fascism and indoctrination in the media, ex-gays aren’t given a fair shake.”

Rios confidently predicted that “thousands of ex-gays are descending” on Washington for a press conference planned for today at the Supreme Court. She lamented that when she led Concerned Women for America the media refused to hear “our ex-gay friends” because it “undermined the whole effort of the homosexual lobby.”

Doyle told Rios that “tens of thousands” of ex-gays exist but are “in the closet because of fear, shame and threats from gay activists.”

Well, despite the expectation that “thousands of ex-gays” would partake in Ex-Gay Pride Month, fewer than ten people showed up for the big event.

Setting aside that the explanation is obvious, that the thousands of ex-gays are still hiding in the closet because they are afraid of the discrimination they and their fellow heterosexuals face each and every day under the iron fist of the homofascists, one question simply persists. As Tory Roberts’ photographs from the event show, these activists are demanding ex-gay equal rights, and now.

And I really, really don’t know what that means. “Ex-gay equal rights now”. Anybody? Anybody?