Right-wing groups promote bigotry
Focus on the Family, Concerned Women of America, the Illinois Family Institute, and other groups with access to right-wing airwaves claim not to be bigoted and reactionary organizations.
In particular, they claim not to disrespect gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people when they denounce their "lifestyles." No, they merely want to deny these couples the same rights enjoyed by heterosexual couples in marriage.
These rights are many and important; they encompass everything from inheritance rights and the right to be on a spouse's health insurance policy to the right to visit one's life partner in a hospital.
These groups also oppose federal protection of LGBT people against discrimination in housing, public accommodations and employment. They like the idea that a landlord should be legally able to refuse to rent to somebody gay or lesbian. They approve of the power an employer has to hire or fire someone based on his perceived sexual orientation. They see nothing reactionary about these positions.
Nor do these groups feel it's a matter of bigotry that, based on their highly selective reading of the Bible, they can justify religious intolerance against a whole sub-culture of their fellow citizens.
Although the largely white, comfortable, middle-class members of these organizations may never feel inclined to beat up a gay guy or spit on a lesbian couple holding hands or castrate a "pre-op" transgendered person in an alley -- all actions far too common today in the United States -- they provide the cover, the legitimacy, the respectable front to a far more murderous bigotry and hatred whose practitioners are only too willing and able to commit such vicious acts.
But when you call these organizations and their members on it, when you insist they bear responsibility for promoting hate and intolerance, they hide behind a veneer of civility and good manners, denounce "name-calling" and hypocritically trumpet the shibboleth calling us to love the "sinner" and hate the "sin."
Have they no shame?
Roger Fraser
In particular, they claim not to disrespect gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people when they denounce their "lifestyles." No, they merely want to deny these couples the same rights enjoyed by heterosexual couples in marriage.
These rights are many and important; they encompass everything from inheritance rights and the right to be on a spouse's health insurance policy to the right to visit one's life partner in a hospital.
These groups also oppose federal protection of LGBT people against discrimination in housing, public accommodations and employment. They like the idea that a landlord should be legally able to refuse to rent to somebody gay or lesbian. They approve of the power an employer has to hire or fire someone based on his perceived sexual orientation. They see nothing reactionary about these positions.
Nor do these groups feel it's a matter of bigotry that, based on their highly selective reading of the Bible, they can justify religious intolerance against a whole sub-culture of their fellow citizens.
Although the largely white, comfortable, middle-class members of these organizations may never feel inclined to beat up a gay guy or spit on a lesbian couple holding hands or castrate a "pre-op" transgendered person in an alley -- all actions far too common today in the United States -- they provide the cover, the legitimacy, the respectable front to a far more murderous bigotry and hatred whose practitioners are only too willing and able to commit such vicious acts.
But when you call these organizations and their members on it, when you insist they bear responsibility for promoting hate and intolerance, they hide behind a veneer of civility and good manners, denounce "name-calling" and hypocritically trumpet the shibboleth calling us to love the "sinner" and hate the "sin."
Have they no shame?
Roger Fraser
Comments