THEY WOULDN’T DO THIS IF IT WERE A MOSQUE: Marching against Rick Warren’s church.
This is some rather strange commentary from Glenn Reynolds, who obviously hasn’t thought through his own logic.
Let’s deconstruct, shall we? Glenn is saying that gays wouldn’t march against an Islamic mosque. But why not?
Unless, of course, they feared (probably rightly) a violent response from the faithful of the religion of peace. So the lessons gays should learn is that if they want respect, if they want to make people afraid to offend them, then they need to start responding violently whenever they are attacked, is that right, Glenn?
Actually, in the real world, this does work pretty well. Glenn is right - nobody marches against Islam, because they fear to do so. And when I was a kid, back in the 1950s, one of the favorite Saturday night activities of white high school jocks and other badasses was to pile into a car and drive into the local ghetto looking for n*ggers to beat up.
They eventually stopped doing it for a very simple reason - it became obvious that doing so was a good way to get their heads blown off by black activists who had armed themselves.
Maybe if a few would-be gay bashers were left as bullet-riddled carcasses in the streets of American gay neighborhoods, folks wouldn’t be quite so quick to treat gays as despised third class quasi-citizens suitable for attacks of any kind.
So yeah, Glenn, I guess I agree with your logic. I’m just surprised to see you express it so openly.
Submit to Stumbled Upon!
Bill, if you search his site, he’s been saying that Islam is teaching everyone that violence and intimidation works for a couple of years now.
And it isn’t just Islamics, is it? How many people in 2004 and this election reported having their cars and houses vandalized if they dared show a McCain sticker or sign? Not to mention this?
SDN, I read everything Glenn writes, and I am quite aware of what he’s been saying about Islam, as I note above. However, I am equally aware that he disapproves of the angry gay reaction to bigotry from blacks and Mormons - because, you see, I read everything he writes.
Which is why his comment puzzles me. Why conflate the two? What I posted is the only logical interpretation I can come up with, but I don’t actually think Glenn is advocating that gays start shooting blacks and Mormons. Still, what other message do you take from it, given your encyclopedic knowledge of his writing on both subjects?
In a world where we’re required to tolerate any and all behavior of “oppressed minorities”, including violence, the only way to have equal rights is to be a member of an oppressed minority that commits violence.
Tolerance. Feh. It’s amazing how tissue-thin the platitudes of the Left really are. I suppose that Kant is out of fashion.
I think Glenn was simply pointing out that leftist protest rallies, while appearing to be bold actions - “speaking truth to power”, are often the opposite. They mostly happen when there is no real risk of adverse consequences. Hence, a protest against a mild new-age Christian church rather than a protest against a much more implacable (dare I say, potentially militant) adversary like Islam.
Or perhaps it is unPC for one perpetually-aggrieved group (gays) to criticize another (Islam). That might actually do some damage to the perpetual grievance industry in general. We can’t have that.
I think you’re reaching, Brian.
I don’t know how much grit Rick Warren’s congregants have, but I wouldn’t recommend pushing the Mormons too far.
As a matter of fact, martinra, gays are an oppressed minority.
If any other group were treated as gays are, the streets of our cities would be gutter-deep in blood, and the skies filled with smoke from burning rubble.
Hey, blacks - you can’t adopt children. You can’t marry outside your race, or, actually, marry at all. It’s perfectly legal and culturally okay to discriminate against you based on your race in matters of employment and housing. Oh, yeah, and you can only serve in the military if you somehow can disguise the fact you’re black.
And a lot more.
It’s okay to say you support oppressing the gay minority group. What isn’t okay is to try to pretend that this group is not an oppressed minority.
I didn’t mean to pretend that gays aren’t an oppressed minority, Bill. The purpose of my first comment was to illustrate that the double-standard “tolerance” pushed by the Left serves only to encourage violence, first by the “protected minorities” who can get away with it, and eventually in response by the majority who has lost all options for peaceful conflict resolution. The second comment’s purpose was only to note that Mormons have not been shy about self-defense in the past, and so radical gay terrorism against them, were any gays to engage in it, would not be wise.
I don’t know how gays get a fair shake, Bill, but I do know that they’re mostly ordinary non-militant people who just get turned on by different things than I do. I also believe that they’re a small enough and unpopular enough minority that if they do go the violent militant route, the results will not be an improvement over the current regrettable status quo.
However, gays arming themselves in self-defense is an excellent idea. Nothing encourages real tolerance like a few dead bigots shot down while attempting aggravated assault.
My problem is equating a few noisy demonstrations where some non-PC epithets are shouted as being equivalent to armed violence. What the hell was Reynolds actually trying to say by conflating the armed violence of Islamofascism in the same sentence with these demos?
I’m certainly not advocating that gays start gunning down blacks or Mormons or other bigots. But Islam would have no qualms about doing so to its enemies. So, is Glenn holding up Islamofascist violence as an example for gays? Or is he saying that armed violence is a suitable strategy for anti-gay bigots?
I note that he’s back on his soapbox this morning, beating the drum about how awful these angry gays are. I know he supports gay rights and gay marriage (although he quibbles about how that should best be brought about), so why all the shock at the anger demonstrated by the victims of outright, organized anti-gay bigotry against those bigots?
Maybe he’s just pointing out that violent, dangerous bigots get to go about their bigotry unmolested, while quiet, non-violent bigots attract all the protests? Reinforcing the point that the old-style civil rights crusaders faced down the kangaroo courts, the truncheons, the dogs, the firehoses, the cross-burners, the snipers in the dark, and the lynchings at dawn, while today’s protesters always seem to find their way to pick on the “turn the other cheek” crowd and avoid stirring up the medieval-minded savages?
If I had to guess, I’d agree with Brian that Glenn was using this incident to point out the elephant in the room - that nobody protests at mosques, no matter how badly Muslims behave, because Muslims have “teh crazy boom-boom” reputation and evangelical megachurches don’t. I don’t think he meant to delegitimize the protests of understandably upset LGBTs in California, though I can see how his comment could be portrayed as insensitive.
I see. And this has what to do with gays angry at the organized bigotry of the Mormon and other churches?
That’s not a mixed message, it’s gibberish.
I think that all Glenn is saying is that Islam tends to be far more openly bigoted on this (and many other) issues, yet the world is intimidated into silence, partly due to an outright fear of violence, and partly due to political correctness. Attacking Christians is much, much easier, and usually done to the thunderous applause of the media.
Seems like a simple message. Why are you convinced that Glenn’s motives are bad here?
Not bad, confused. You keep forgetting that he strongly disapproves of the gay anger in response to bigotry from the churches and the blacks. Or perhaps you don’t forget it, you just wish to deliberately ignore it in order to stamp your own interpretation on what Glenn wrote.
I find that most “anonymous” commenters aren’t very bright, so let me put it as simply as I can - move your lips and follow along:
Glenn cannot in the same breath, and sentence, point out that Islamic violence and anger are effective in combating bigotry against them, and also belabor gays for employing naked anger in response to bigotry.
It makes no sense, which is exactly what I point out when I say that he hasn’t fully considered the “logic” of his post.
Bill, my somewhat narrow point to you is that Glenn has been drawing this comparison for a while now, and your post didn’t indicate you were aware of it.
My somewhat larger point directed at “the readers” is that not only Islamics have been employing this tactic. Your post above on treating our politics as a war was actually where I was headed… and I don’t think we’ll be able to stop at rhetoric.
I don’t know that Muslim willingness to use violence on non-Muslims is effective in combating bigotry. I’d say it actually confirms most bigots’ fears about them. What it undeniably does is suppress open expression of anything that could be perceived as anti-Muslim. So violence is good at driving expression underground, but it doesn’t change the underlying feelings. If anything, it makes them worse.
I think I missed the part where Glenn strongly disapproved of gay anger at the approval of Prop 8. Did he disapprove of the anger, or of its expression into epithets and racial slurs?
That’s correct, martinra. Glenn doesn’t mind gay anger as long as they don’t express it in way of which he disapproves.
Very nice. Very moderate.
You know what? I was a young adult during the civil rights battles of the 1960s. I hitchhiked through Louisiana and saw with my own eyes the White Only signs on restrooms, water fountains, and restaurant doors.
I was in the Movement when H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael pitch whites out of their big tent, called us Honkeys - “If we are niggers, then you are honkeys!” and I remember that the great Civil Rights acts of the Johnson administration were in response to black violence in the cities, and the fear on the part of whites that it might be their neighborhoods next. History has been, um, whitewashed about that since, but I was there, and I remember.
Still, that exclusion, those ephithets, that violence got those laws passed. It wasn’t done by well-meaning fellow travelers. It was done because white people got scared, and were forced to take cognizance of legitimate black grievances about very real oppression, and do something about it.
Racists are still with us, but they are dwindling, and they rightly fear to express and act on their racism. In the meantime, a new generation is growing up without the racism of their parents.
I’m not kidding when I say the struggle for liberty is more than polite words and measured disputation. If bigots were more frightened of gays, they might be less open about the expression and practice of their bigotry. I don’t think it is important whether or not people hate you, as it is whether they can act out their hate in ways that hurt you.
Finally, do you think the Islamists care whether you like them, or whether you are a bigot towards them, as long as you are scared shitless to do anything about your bigotry?
SDN: I don’t think it will be limited to rhetoric, either. The left didn’t so limit itself in the great takeovers of the Sixties and Seventies, either.
Bill, I tried to elaborate on that in a comment to “losers”, but it was apparently eaten by the spam filter, probably because it had too many links.
Pulled that out of the bin for you, SDN.
Well, Bill, I think your commenters got it already. I think the folks protesting at the Mormon Temple would never protest at a mosque because (1) they’re cowards; and (2) they view Muslims as oppressed, and hence favored. Protesting the Mormons is PC. Protesting Muslims is not.
As you know, I support gay marriage; if I had the power myself, I’d make it legal. But this whole thing happened because Gavin Newsom felt he had to rub voters’ noses in the fact that they couldn’t do anything, and it blew up in his face — and because the Light Worker’s own voters, brought to the polls in disproportionate numbers, turned out to be less “enlightened” than a lot of Obama’s acolytes thought they’d be. Is it small and petty of me to enjoy seeing people tripped up by political correctness? Probably. But allow me a little fun, please. It’s been a tough year.
They turned out solely to vote for the Black man. Since they are bigots you should not expect a rational vote on Gay marriage from them. (I’m skating around an overused term)
It’s not clear to me that black voters were bigoted towards the half-black candidate and against the white one. IIRC, nationwide black voters went for Obama 94%, which is very lopsided, but still within a few percentage points of the results that Gore and Kerry got. Black voters are pretty much a solid Democrat constituency every election.
Now, are black voters bigoted against gays? Absolutely, but they’re far from alone in that. As the O-fer record on gay marriage initiatives shows, majorities of just about everyone in America are bigoted against gays, at least as regards permitting them to marry. Civil unions seem to poll better, so as a simple tactical move, I’d recommend that gays take the half a loaf where they can get it and pick up the fight for full equality again a bit down the road. Acceptance of gays is very age-dependent, and the younger generations rising will be much more likely to permit full normalization than the older are now.
It sucks, really, but the foundations for the civil rights victories of the ’60s and ’70s for blacks and women were laid in the ’40s when WWII’s manpower shortages forced integration of the Armed Forces and the factories. Suddenly, far more white men had personal experience of working alongside “the other”, and it wasn’t bad. There’s no substitute for that kind of actual contact and cooperation with actual “outsiders” to demolish all forms of stereotype and bigotry.
In fact, I think that peaceful integration and association will bring about equality for gays far faster than militancy would. I believe that MLK Jr. and those who followed his lead did far more to bring about racial equality under the law than did the militants of the Black Panther party.
Okay, Glenn. I get you. I’ve had a pretty tough year, too, and part of it has been seeing the hopes and dreams of some of my best friends - the few who are still alive after the onslaught of the plague - smashed by religious and other bigots, some of whom were in service to the Light Bringer.
It’s left me a little…raw.
Bill: I get it. That’s why I almost didn’t respond. But I’m finding my fun where I can here — and the Obama Years promise a lot of it, if you have the right sense of humor. Which I’m trying to cultivate.
Hey, gays- you CAN adopt children. As long as you’re married. And guess what? You CAN marry outside your ‘race’, and, in fact, marry anyone at all–except the person you might actually WANT to marry. It’s actuallly illegal–but culturally okay to discriminate against you based on your ‘race’ in matters of employment and housing. Oh, yeah, the person discriminating CAN get busted for it, and they often do, but it’s gonna be an uphill fight. You can only serve in the military if you somehow can disguise the fact you’re gay
Played with that a bit. Gay isn’t black. Racism and homophobia are two very different things–and I suspect homophobia is far older than racism.
Homosexuals have the exact same public rights as everyone else. They have even been included in various civil rights statutes which give them the protections offered to other historically repressed minorities.
What they actually lack is the ability to use some of the structures of society due to their …what? Sexual preference? I believe homosexuality is genetic, so I don’t see it as a ‘preference’. Orientation?
It’s why I put ‘race’ in quotes up there.
Homosexuality needs a definition that allows it to be placed. I’ve called it a non-hereditary contra-survival mutation. It appears to simply be a way our genes sometimes combine. While it usually leaves one physically ABLE to reproduce, it DOES leave one unable to be ‘attracted’ to a mate one can reproduce WITH.
Using ‘unable’ as a jumping off point, it could then be classed–albeit in a limited fashion, as a disability.
On that basis, it could be pointed out that there are facets of society that those with disabilities are simply unable to partake in–because their disability makes it impossible. We can put as many subtitles on a film as we like–and still the deaf will never understand how tone modifies meaning–save academically.
But we DO make the effort.
Marriage, however, is not something that requires a physical ability(the child thing is just nonsense).
And yet, in this case, the general population seems unwilling to make an effort. Why?
Disgust. We are fascinated by freaks–but that fascination is tinged with disgust. The obviously handicapped can tell you all about that. But it is the mentally handicapped who can REALLY go off.
When people ‘find out’.
See, those who are not obviously handicapped can hide–and it creeps out those that are not handicapped. That is what gays suffer from. Is the guy at the next urinal looking at my dick?
Black people aren’t hidden among us.
That’s what makes this different. That’s why the old Civil Rights solutions still fall on deaf ears. That’s why people suggest patience. It took us a long time to accept the blind, deaf and wheelchair bound among us.
We will have gay marriage–but I don’t think we’ll get it by imposing it.
.
That demonstrates either your ignorance, or that you’re deliberately lying. Which is it? Since you seem reasonably intelligent and aware, I have to assume it is the second. None of the federal civil rights acts cover discrimination in housing, employment, or anything else based on sexual orientation. Some states do, but they are the minority.
Nope, they are both bigotry.
We got mixed-race marriage that way. It was imposed by the courts. It never, ever won an election that I know of. And guess what? Bigots and bigotry to the contrary, neither marriage, nor the world, were destroyed.
It’s not Jan 20, 2009 yet.
Huh?
To judge by some of the hysteria, the world will end when Obama, who is of mixed race, becomes President.
You could say I’m projecting, but I’d wager he disapproves of both. I’d prefer a lot more tolerance and rationality all the way around, myself. I’m not enjoying all of the Mormon bashing much either.
Okay, I know I’m not supposed to enjoy being insulted, but this was pretty amusing… particularly since I wound up “Anonymous” due to goofing the comment form. Some insults are unfair, and some you earn.
Civil rights activist, former school teacher and now Blues singer. Gaye Adegbalola, keynote speaker at Fredericksburg Pride The speech covers the similarities and differences between Gay and Civil Rights.
Slide guitar “Queer Blues”
He’s not, any more than he’s saying that Christians should become violent. It’s all the same issue here, not two or more as you’ve presented it.
Reynolds is talking about not only the effectiveness of Islamic violence and intimidation, but the fact that it’s being enabled by those who look the other way. Not in a million years would those same people look the other way if, say, the Mormons started using the same tactics.
Quite a few people are in the habit of being apologists simply because that is the general current among their general end of the political spectrum; they don’t actually THINK about it until you apply the same situation to some other group.
Tim: Glenn and I had this conversation a bit earlier in the thread - Glenn:
You and I, however, do disagree on the other part of the issue: I do think it is perfectly acceptable to protest against the Mormons, given that they in large part financed and organized the victory against gay marriage. People pretending otherwise are simply ignoring reality. Nor should Mormons be any more immune to protests than Muslims, and vice versa.
I am writing to the press for help my family and many others who have been denied documents about how their family member died. The laws in most states gives complete authority to the spouse, and the family has NO rights to know how their child, sibling, etc, died?!
I have made thousands of calls and e-mails to every official imaginable, and have been put off by each and have fought like hell to receive what I have. I have asked for a Federal Investigation into the corruption in Durham, North Carolina to conceal proof that my brother was murdered, staged as a suicide, and all of the governing agencies had proof of murder, and not only did nothing, have conspired to keep us from getting the information to prove it.
After over 3 years I have gleaned enough evidence, and am pleading to the media for help!
I have the entire story on my MySpace, http://www.myspace.com/sinnderrella
I ask you to read my blogs to better understand how deep this case goes, and pray that you will help me and other families allowed access to documents under the FOIA, Public Record’s Act, and as “Next Of Kin.”
Respectfully,
Rhonda Fleming
Cleveland, Ohio
justice4all2005@yahoo.com
I do have to laugh at the idea that Gays are some kind of oppressed minority. At least at the company I work at the only person who I have ever run into who talks endlessly about sex is Gay. I guess the straight people think they are there to work. The company newsletter prints liberation stories of Gays who have overcome their repressive childhood religious training. All I can say is cry me a river.
Proposition 8 does deny some people the right to marry anyone though. Marriage is now defined as between a man and a woman.
That covers everyone, right? Well, not as such. Neither biologically, nor in the eyes of the law.
It’s called “Intersex”. The non-PC and inaccurate word is “Hermaphrodite”.
Technically 1.7% of the population are not quite 100% male nor 100% female, but for all but 0.1% this is a pure technicality and often only determinable by a laboratory. Some suffer infertility or sterility as the result, and may have to take hormone supplements at puberty, but that’s about it.
But for those 1 in 1000 it’s not a small matter, and that means 10s of thousands in California. Now most have been (sometimes as the result of a coin-toss) assigned as male or female legally - but that would always be open to legal challenge, as has happened in the past.
And for some, say those born in jurisdictions which recognise biological reality, and whose birth certificates and passports say “X-Indeterminate” for Sex, then they have just had a fundamental human right removed.
I have dual nationality. Both my country of origin, and my country of naturalisation prohibit same-sex marriage.
But in my country of origin, I’m legally male, and in my country of residence, legally female. Biologically I’m rather more female than male, and psychologically strongly female.
Should I go to California… would they count my chromosomes and birth certificate as being definitive? Or my genitalia and both my passports? No matter what, any attempt at entering marriage would be subject to immediate challenge. As would any existing marriage.