Posted on 05/20/2003 8:14:33 AM PDT by theoverseer
In four Gospels - including the Sermon on the Mount - Jesus neglected to mention the subject of homosexuality. But that hasn’t stopped a handful of self-appointed leaders of the so-called Religious Right from deciding that it is an issue worth the presidency of the United States. In what the Washington Times described as a "stormy session" last week, the Rev. Lou Sheldon, Paul Weyrich, Gary Bauer and eight other "social conservatives" read the riot act to RNC chairman Marc Racicot for meeting with the "Human Rights Campaign," a group promoting legal protections for homosexuals. This indiscretion, they said, "could put Bush’s entire re-election campaign in jeopardy."
According to the Times’ report by Ralph Hallow, the RNC chairman defended himself by saying, "You people don’t want me to meet with other folks, but I meet with anybody and everybody." To this Gary Bauer retorted, "That can’t be true because you surely would not meet with the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan."
Nice analogy Gary. Way to love thy neighbor.
This demand to quarantine a political enemy might have had more credibility if the target – the Campaign for Human Rights -- were busily burning crosses on social conservatives’ lawns. But they aren’t. Moreover, the fact that it is, after all, crosses the Ku Klux Klan burns, might suggest a little more humility on the part of Christians addressing these issues. Just before the launching of the 2000 presidential campaign, George Bush himself was asked about similarly mean-spirited Republican attacks. His response was that politicians like him weren’t elected to pontificate about other people’s morals and that his own faith admonished him to take the beam out of his own eye before obsessing over the mote in someone else’s.
The real issue here is tolerance of differences in a pluralistic society. Tolerance is different from approval, but it is also different from stigmatizing and shunning those with whom we disagree.
I say this as someone who is well aware that Christians are themselves a persecuted community in liberal America, and as one who has stood up for the rights of Christians like Paul Weyrich and Gary Bauer to have their views, even when I have not agreed with some of their agendas. Not long ago, I went out on a public limb to defend Paul Weyrich when he was under attack by the Washington Post and other predictable sources for a remark he had made that was (reasonably) construed as anti-Semitic. I defended Weyrich because I have known him to be a decent man without malice towards Jews and I did not want to see him condemned for a careless remark. I defended him in order to protest the way in which we have become a less tolerant and more mean-spirited culture than we were.
I have this to say to Paul: A delegation to the chairman of the RNC to demand that he have no dialogue with the members of an organization for human rights is itself intolerant, and serves neither your ends nor ours. You told Racicot, "if the perception is out there that the party has accepted the homosexual agenda, the leaders of the pro-family community will be unable to help turn out the pro-family voters. It won’t matter what we say; people will leave in droves."
This is disingenuous, since you are a community leader and share the attitude you describe. In other words, what you are really saying is that if the mere perception is that the Republican Party has accepted the "homosexual agenda," you will tell your followers to defect with the disastrous consequences that may follow. As a fellow conservative, I do not understand how in good conscience you can do this. Are you prepared to have President Howard Dean or President John Kerry preside over our nation’s security? Do you think a liberal in the White House is going to advance the agendas of social conservatives? What can you be thinking?
In the second place, the very term "homosexual agenda," is an expression of intolerance as well. Since when do all homosexuals think alike? In fact, thirty percent of the gay population voted Republican in the last presidential election. This is a greater percentage than blacks, Hispanics or Jews. Were these homosexuals simply deluded into thinking that George Bush shared their agendas? Or do they perhaps have agendas that are as complex, diverse and separable from their sexuality as women, gun owners or Christians, for that matter?
In your confusion on these matters, you have fallen into the trap set for you by your enemies on the left. It is the left that insists its radical agendas are the agendas of blacks and women and gays. Are you ready to make this concession -- that the left speaks for these groups, for minorities and "the oppressed?" Isn’t it the heart of the conservative argument that liberalism (or, as I would call it, leftism) is bad doctrine for all humanity, not just white Christian males?
If the President’s party – or conservatism itself -- is to prevail in the political wars, it must address the concerns of all Americans and seek to win their hearts and minds. It is conservative values that forge our community and create our coalition, and neither you nor anyone else has - or should have - a monopoly in determining what those values are.
None.
Also, are you talking about decriminalization on a state or a federal-constitutional level?
IMHO under the 10th Amendment whether or not sodomy is criminalized is a matter for the state legislatures, not the federal courts. It seems perfectly clear that those statutes are constitutional, but I'm not confident the Supremes can restrain themselves from once again legislating from the bench.
If you TRULY believe that all homosexuals think alike
Male on male SODOMY is a behavior that requires thought to perform the act. delusional
Yes you are.
So you won't discuss the facts demonstrating the homosexual agenda. No surprise there - folks who use your arguments never respond to the facts. You take issue when I label you pro-gay but then you won't post your position.
Homosexuals don't mind their own business. Instead they want more than tolerance, they want acceptance, and they want to teach kids it's okay to be gay. What they forget to mention is the health hazards of the homosexual lifestyle.
Yeah, I know. You won't read it.
but I'm not confident the Supremes can restrain themselves from once again legislating from the bench.
5-4 in favor of the homos. Some politicians are pre-positioning for the announcement.
another home run by Horowitz.
Foul ball(s). But you wouldn't know the difference.
Having sex is part of life liberty and the pursuit of happeness. The government does not have the authority to tell adults which other adults they can have sex with and how. Even the constitution acknowledges broader rights under the 9th amendment.
You may surrender this right to the government, but we conservatives do not.
You don't need to go as far as Google. Just check these 3 stories posted on FR in the last 2 days:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/914263/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/913965/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/913849/posts
Those 3 articles are just about the protest at the commencement speech. Here's another article posted since yesterday on the Santorum controversy:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/914302/posts
Maybe I missed it, but I haven’t heard of any calls within the GOP for Santorum to step down from any committees or apologize
And here's one from yesterday about a challenge to Santorum mounted by "Rendellican" i.e. Pennsylvania moderate Republicans:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/914316/posts
You comments about my attitude being a program for liberal victory didn’t make any sense to me.
As I pointed out in an earlier post on this thread, the Republican party minus the hard-core social conservatives equals the Conservative Party in Canada or the Tories in England. In other words, dead meat, R.I.P., irrelevant, non-existent. Who needs 2 Democratic parties, with one pushing the homosexual agenda slightly slower than the other one?
What bothers me on these threads is that homosexuals are individuals with rights, like the rest of us. They are not represented by extremists any more than all black folks are represented by Jesse Jackson. Yet they are regularly attacked here as a monolith with no acknowledgement of individual rights or philosophies.
Not an expert on incest. I saw an argument on another thread that it is children who are being protected in laws against incest because of the stats on birth defects etc.
I can also say that I think something shouldn't be done, but I oppose it being illegal and using government resources to stop it. Like drugs and sodomy.
Please explain to the interested readers why the government can send some adult to jail for having consentual sex with another adult. And then explain why that is not big government.
POST #223.
Correct. This is one of the gazillion policy decisions the Constitution leaves to the state legislatures. It's called a democratic Republic.
Show me the passage in the Constitution that grants the right you describe. It's not there. The people who wrote the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence thought that sodomy laws (as well as laws against bigamy, adultery and seduction) were perfectly constitutional.
You are the one giving up rights. When you read into the Fourteenth Amendment the concept of substantive due process instead of the procedural due process it actually guarantees, you have just taken the decision of what rights you have out of the hands of elected representatives and put it in the hands of nine unelected lifetime justices.
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