Monday, June 13, 2005

Gay Americans -- get here as fast as you can

I think all gay people in the US had better move to Canada as soon as they can.
I was doing some searching tonight to find out how many anti-gay marriage initiatives are going to be on the 2006 mid-term ballots. Now, maybe I didn't look hard enough, but it surprised me that I could not find any list on pro-democratic sites, though there was mention of 10 or 15 state initiatives. As you will recall, the 11 anti-gay initiatives in 2004 got Christian activists out to the polls all fired up: this won the election for Bush and Republicans. They all passed by a significant margin. So I do not doubt that the Republicans are already planning that any states where they are vulnerable to Democratic challengers in 2006 will also feature an anti-gay ballot initiatives. I just hope the Democrats are organizing to deal with this.
Anyway, back to my warning. While searching, I noted a chilling new article from the Southern Poverty Law Centre which argues that targeting and demonizing gays has been a deliberate focus of the Christian Right over the last 30-years. Its not just gay marriage -- it is the gay person's right to live in the United States that they are attacking, or to live at all. The article describes Christian 'reconstructionists' as wanting the death penalty for homosexuality. "Ten Commandments" judge Roy Moore is quoted in a 2002 custody decision, describing gays as "abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature . . . [t]he State carries the power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit [homosexual] conduct with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution. It must use that power to prevent the subversion of children toward this lifestyle."
Here are some other recent statements by so-called Christian leaders:
"Homosexuals . . . want to destroy the institution of marriage. It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the earth." "Our great nation is under violent attack from within. We are now at the 11th hour, a point of no return." "What's at stake here is the very foundation of our society, not only of America but all Western civilization." "I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm gonna be blunt and plain: if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died."
Alternet reprints this LA Weekly article The New Blacklist about the anti-gay boycotts and how they connect to the whole Christian Right agenda. It quotes investigative journalist Chip Berlet's summary of these connections:

What's motivating these people is . . . an incredible dread, completely irrational, of a hodgepodge of sexual subversion and social chaos. The response to that fear is genuinely a grassroots response, and it's motivated by fundamentalist Christian doctrines like Triumphalism and Dominionism, which order Christians to take over the secular state and secular institutions. The Christian right frames itself as an oppressed minority battling the secular-humanist liberal homofeminist hordes . . . The re-election of Bush was a sort of tipping point for these people, who take it as a mandate from God -- they see that the leadership of America is within their grasp, and when you get closer to your goal, it's very energizing. It reaches a critical mass, in which the evangelicals feel they have permission to push their way into public and cultural policy in every walk and expression of life.

All together now, everybody sing --
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.

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