Debasing our culture (BARF ALERT - smear job on Sheri L. Dew)

MUCH HAS BEEN made of the Republican National Committee’s decision to showcase the moderate wing of the party from the stage at Madison Square Garden this week. Hence speeches by Senator John McCain and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani on Monday night, and by California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday. And no invocation by Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, or Pat Robertson. The president, understandably, wants to avoid a Pat Buchanan–esque moment of the sort that marred his father’s convention in 1992. (Buchanan’s prime-time rant about the "culture war" was so extreme that Molly Ivins quipped it was better in the original German.) Yet very little attention has been paid to the fact that the invocation on Monday was given by a woman who this past February compared those who support the rights of lesbian and gay couples to marry with those who supported Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

Sheri Dew, who is the CEO of the Deseret Book Company and a Mormon activist, was invited to give the invocation by the RNC. She told Utah’s Deseret Morning News this week that she had "no idea" how the Republicans found her and that she received a call from the committee "out of the blue." But the right-wing Dew, who is also the author of religious inspirational books like No Doubt About It, is well known in reactionary circles. Last February 28, Dew delivered a speech to an interfaith conference on marriage sponsored by the Family Action Council International, a Virginia-based nonprofit that advocates for the "family as the fundamental unit of society."

In that speech, which was published by Meridian, an online magazine devoted to topics of interest to the Mormon community, Dew made the same-sex-marriage rights/Nazi sympathizer analogy. After making the comparison (you can read her whole speech online at www.meridianmagazine.com/ideas/040310defendersprint.html), she noted: "At first it may seem a bit extreme to imply a comparison between the atrocities of Hitler and what is happening in terms of contemporary threats against the family — but maybe not."

Maybe not? Dew made her comparison between gay-rights activists and Nazis deliberately and carefully. What does it say about the state of our nation that this woman was invited to give the opening prayer at the Republican National Convention? (During which she prayed for the "wisdom to protect and defend all families" — code for "legal authority to attack and dismantle lesbian and gay families.") What does it say about the state of our national conversation that those who drive the debate — Washington, DC–based pundits and politicos — don’t think this is worthy of comment, much less condemnation? And what does it say about politics today that everyone would rather debate what happened in the Mekong Delta 30 years ago (see "The Crooked Cowboy," Editorial, August 27) than call the Republicans on their strategy to lure radicals to the polls by embracing a campaign of hate toward people like the vice-president’s daughter?

Dew, of course, wasn’t the only right-winger invited to grace the stage of the "moderate" RNC confab. Grammy-winning gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, who during an interview with Charisma magazine described homosexuality as a curse caused by "neglect, abuse, and molestation," is scheduled to perform for the delegates on Thursday. Bishop Keith Butler, founder of the Word of Faith International Christian Center, in Michigan, and a virulent opponent of the rights of same-sex couples to marry, was also scheduled to address delegates on Thursday. And Senator Rick Santorum, who has compared homosexuality with bestiality, was scheduled to address delegates on Wednesday. These are not moderates. They are extremists. For the press to portray the RNC as a moderate affair is simply inaccurate and misleading. Indeed, McCain, Giuliani, and Schwarzenegger are moderate fig leaves for an extremist party.

We are living in dangerous times. The mainstream press is all too willing to investigate the baseless, scurrilous charges of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which lends dignity to Republican lies and distortions. From the moment the first Swift Boat charge was lobbed, the media should have noted the connections between Bush aide Karl Rove and the Swift Boat group’s backers, and noted that this was the third time Bush and/or his supporters have smeared a Vietnam veteran during a campaign. The first time was with McCain during the 2000 Republican presidential primary; the second was in 2002, during Max Cleland’s unsuccessful bid for re-election to the Senate; and now it’s happening with John Kerry. Meanwhile, the media take at face value the notion that the GOP has presented a compassionate, moderate slate of speakers at this year’s convention, despite the presence of speakers like Dew.

It’s no wonder the president was able to get away with lying to bring to the country to war. It’s no wonder that GOP radicals have been able to pass tax cut after tax cut after tax cut to the near-exclusive benefit of the wealthiest two percent of the country (thus triggering ruinous budget deficits). It’s no wonder that social policy in this country has been reduced to denouncing gay men and lesbians as the root cause of all that ails us. And it’s no wonder that Bush stands poised to steal another election thanks to our failure to enact meaningful voting reform in the wake of the 2000 Florida debacle (see "Revisiting the Scene of the Crime," News and Features, August 27).

There is only one way to end this disgrace: vote. You have until 20 days before the November 2 presidential election to register to vote. Visit www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/eleifv/howreg.htm for information on how to register if you haven’t already. More than at any other time in recent history, this election matters.

Even if you extend it to meaning that opposing same sex marriage is as important as opposing Hitler it isn't offensive.

Yes it is offensive. Opposing the systematic slaughter of millions of people is much more important than opposing letting people whose beliefs about family differ from your own get a government-issued marriage certificate. Suggesting otherwise is highly offensive.

Personally, I think the government should get the heck out of the whole marriage sanctioning/regulating business, as it invariably violates a lot of people's religious and other beliefs (like when federal troops were dispatched to Utah to forcibly stop 19th century Mormons from practicing polygamy, in accordance with their religious beliefs), and is an unwarranted government intrusion into people's private lives. However, I wouldn't dream of suggesting that a campaign to achieve that end is comparable in importance to opposing what Hitler did.

I didn't say the BP had a valid reason for writing the article -- just that Dew's comments were indeed inappropriate, and when they are so easily retrievable in this Internet age, it should have been easily foreseeable to those choosing convention speakers that the comment would be dug up and used by hostile media outlets.

Well, they shouldn't have had a woman from a cult that denies the diety of Jesus Christ open the convention.
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You couldn't be more wrong my friend. No Church is more firm in declaring the divinity of Jesus Christ than The Church of Jesus Christ, nor is there a better example of a Church whose leaders and members are sincerely trying to follow His divine example.

Your words amount to religious racism and uninformed name calling.

Besides...are you suggesting that Mitt Romney, Bill Marriott, Orin Hatch, and a huge and rapidly growing conservative voting block of highly educated voters, military generals, college presidents and CEOs are misguided and dangerous cultists? What is wrong with this picture?

On the positive side, not too many years ago, your sources were claiming that all Mormons have Satanic horns. "You mustn't talk to them or you will go to hell!" was the popular refrain. So things are looking up...

It is just that this kind of uninformed religious racism is not what this Country, or the Constitution, or the Republican Party stand for. And it is tantamount to calling African Americans the N word. A lot of Mormons have fought and died for this Country, and defended its principles, and worked hard to make this Country great, and a lot more are doing so now. Their beliefs are not dangerous and their skin is not spotted, or green or gray.

That Mormons' views about the nature of God differs from the Aristotelian philosophy embedded in the Nicean Creeds, should make them a dangerous cult, makes about as much sense as saying Macintosh lovers are going to hell because they don't use Windows. ; )

"Yes it is offensive. Opposing the systematic slaughter of millions of people is much more important than opposing letting people whose beliefs about family differ from your own get a government-issued marriage certificate. Suggesting otherwise is highly offensive. "

I belive the long term consequences of same sex marriage will be as devastating on our society in it's own way as Hitler would have been if he was not defeated, and LDS leadership has said 'we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets'.

There is no justification for choosing to take personal offence when the only things that has been critisized are policies, not persons.

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