what next, New York Times – a story about how the old Nazis feel “cut off” in Germany?
- September 29th, 2016
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The New York Times have run a wretched little sob-story sympathy article about how conservative evangelicals feel “cut off” over how their Culture Wars have gone, and by Mr. Trump’s GOP nomination. They focus on an old couple – the Odgaards of Iowa, “religious liberty ambassadors” for the Ted Cruz campaign – who decided to sell their commercial property to the fundamentalist church they attend rather than comply with anti-discrimination law.
Really. How sad.
How about how I felt “cut off” fighting their ballot initiatives criminalising me? Clearly, no one at the New York Times has any goddamn idea what that feels like, or what it’s like to go door to door arguing for my right to exist, or they wouldn’t write such lovely paeans to my vicious, unrelenting oppressors.
Hey, how about an article how queers deal with the long-term multi-impact trauma of having almost. every. single. election. of our adult lives being existential questions? Hey, New York Times, how about I how feel “abandoned” there?
How about how queers feel when this very year, Mr. Trump has promised to nominate only judges endorsed by Heritage Foundation, which thinks states should be allowed to make our existence illegal?
But no, who gives a fuck about queers, we’ve got to talk about sad ol’ Grandma and Grandpa Whitey Bigotsson. How sad they feel “cut off,” how they aren’t adequately represented by their presidential nominee! How abandoned they feel now that they can’t fucking have the state kill me.
Ever been handed a pamphlet calling for your own execution? I’ve said it before, but I have. It wasn’t even this new one from 2015, it was a previous version! They’re still making new ones!
And that is the the kind of thing Grandma and Grandpa are just fine with. That doesn’t make them feel “cut off” or “abandoned” or sad or anything! Oh, they might think that’s a little far, these days, but don’t get it wrong: that’s what they go for when they think they can get it.
I note, by the way, that both Their Guy and Mr. Trump accepted the endorsement of that pamphlet’s author, and stood on stage with him, just best buds 5eva.
But The New York Times apparently wants us to understand how sad they feel. How bereft. How “abandoned.”
“It all flipped, so fast,” said Mr. Odgaard, a patrician 70-year-old who favors khakis and boat shoes. “Suddenly, we were in the minority. That was kind of a scary feeling. It makes you wonder where the Christians went.”
They talk about the decision to sell their building to their church. How sad it is. “It’s like losing a child,” said Ms. Odgaard.
No, you know what’s like losing a child? Making your children homeless and destitute because they’re queer. Like their movement did, and still does.
Queer kids are a big, big chunk of homeless youth – last time I saw a figure, it was 40%. And it’s because their movement encourages it, with their people telling each other it’s the necessary and godly thing to do – assuming the legal torture programme known as “conversion therapy” doesn’t work out, of course.
I’ve written about this before, but I’m never letting it go – Beverly LaHaye, founder of Concerned Women for America, on her nationally-syndicated radio show through the 1990s, telling her listeners that this was critical, that they had to deprive their children of all shelter, all hope, all recourse, all home – for being queer. Listening to her console her listeners who did it, supporting them, encouraging them as they sobbed into the telephone about what was happening to their own children who they had made destitute.
That was fun to transcribe, let me fuckin’ tell you. Those kids show up on the street in Seattle, and other towns, and they’re – go figure – complete wrecks. A lot of them – a lot of them – end up dead.
I guess that’s less “losing a child” and more “killing a child,” but hey, they’re fag kids, who cares, am I right? None of that’s half as poignant as poor ol’ Grandma and Grandpa Bigotsson selling their building to the fundamentalist church they attend instead of complying with anti-discrimination law.
So “cut off.” So “abandoned.” So sad.
Good.
The New York Times is still fucking garbage.
Is it appropriate to throw an “amen”?
Amen, aho, so mote that shit!
Ramen!
Sauce Be Upon Him!
I read this and had EXACTLY the same reaction but nearly as eloquent as you.
It’s _abominable_.
That should read “not nearly”
hee hee hee
I bet they were REALLY not happy with Cruz sucking up to Trump.
Good.
Actually I am rather surprised Cruz did so.
You think he has principles?
No, of course not. I think the calculus of looking like he is standing up consistently would be more appealing for his future.
Oh, hell no. Fundamentalists will rehabilitate _anybody_ for _anything_. All you have to do is Find Jesus Again.
I mean seriously, how else do you think the GOP has used them so effectively for the last three decades with so _little_ delivery?
I just want you to know that I support you.
I’m mad at the _New York Times_, not anybody here. XD
I just wanted it understood. The right wing Christians don’t actually like me much better for what it’s worth.
They probably hate me as an atheist as much as they do you, Dara.
No, they don’t. Not as a movement.
Oh, they hate you, don’t get me wrong. They fear and distrust you – but they also see you as ripe for conversion. Individually, some of them may hate you more than they hate us.
But as a group, as a _political force_, they don’t hate you like they hate us. They hate us _professionally_. They hate us for a _living_.
I have not had to fight a ballot measure proposed to make atheists illegal. I have not had to fight a ballot measure proposed to have schools teach that atheists are perverse, immoral, illegal, and wrong. I have not seen anyone reduced to fighting a ballot measure to make things worse by noting, “voting against this won’t repeal the laws that ALREADY MAKE ATHEISTS ILLEGAL, this is redundant.” Like we had to do in Idaho.
(Yeah, we were already illegal, they wanted to make it harder to make us _not_ be illegal and force schools to teach students how horrible we were. Idaho Citizens Alliance, Proposition 1, 1994. We won at the ballot box by like 2%. It was _nasty_. And one of the arguments that worked was “voting no won’t repeal the sodomy laws.” Now how’s _that_ for soul-destroying?)
Neither party here is officially in opposition to your right to form a family; neither party here has floated state and federal constitutional amendments limiting or eliminating your rights, including to exist.
They hate you. But not like they hate us.
(Ref., so it’s from more than memory – Idaho Citizens Alliance Proposition 1, 1992-1994. Two long years of that fight. http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv92871 )
Point well made and taken.
And if they see me as being ripe for conversion then they are truly living in a delusional world.
They can sod right the hell off …
I don’t care about the Bigotssons in this piece; they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do and nothing’s going to change that.
I’m mad at the _Times_ for framing their horseshittery and urge to oppression as such a sad thing, a sadly lost cause.
You know. Like the Confederacy.
Haters gonna hate but they can do it someplace that is ELSE. like, say, the Phantom Zone.
The “isolation” they feel due to the fracturing of the GOP is the end result of their forty-year-long attempt to keep America fearful, discriminatory, ignorant, and racist. The things that are happening now in the Republican party are the direct consequences of all of their dog whistling, war hawking, gay-bashing, racial sluring, litmus-testing, and nationalist jingoing. And some of us actually tried to warn them. I can remember telling people back 2001-2003 what the end result would be, and none of them wanted to listen. Every step they took towards the right-wing lunatic fringe in an attempt to pander to the Crazy Vote was one step closer to Trump. Barring the real panic that I feel that Trump has gotten this close to the Presidency, I can’t do anything now but popcorn.gif at the Republican Party’s very self-inflicted demise.
I think everyone is sorely underestimating the ability of the GOP to rebrand itself.
Oh, so we’re Nazis now. 😐
Are you part of the fundamentalist evangelical movement that has been doing physical, legal, political, and “spiritual warfare” – to use _their_ term – against queers like me MY ENTIRE LIFE, in your best effort to _wipe me from the face of the Earth_?
Are you part of the movement that has taken about half my lifespan as an adult, that has cost me blood and treasure, that has attacked me in the streets, that has sent me to hospital?
Is that you?
If that’s not you, why do you think I’m talking to or about you? Did you read the link? If you didn’t, next time, consider reading _before_ commenting.
If that _is_ you, then: YES. As far as I’m concerned, yes, you _absolutely are_. And please take your eliminationist fundamentalist batshittery and kindly go _fuck yourself_.
Mitch…dude…I hate to put it this way, but if you are in a party where a lot of people hold beliefs that overlap with those of nazis, you might start getting grouped in with the nazis. The GOP has been digging itself down to the lowest common denominator, and when they hit the bottom of the barrel, they got a backhoe and just kept on digging. They’ve become defined by the lunatic fringe, and this is why so many people are bailing from it now. Those aren’t “RHINOS,” those are the people who have decided that they do not want to be included in any party that has chosen to embrace actual fucking Nazis.
I’m not in that party! LOL I’m from the Rhinoceros Party. Which is way more fun. 😃 I am a Christian though, before anything.
I read it Dara. As a Christian that is not how I think at all. I’m a pacifist at heart, and also a thinker in my belief system. Number one you should never be attacked by anyone for this. Christians get attacked too for beliefs/lifestyle, etc. I don’t believe in any of it. What Christianity teaches is that we are all equal in that we aren’t perfect, and there’s a gift from God to those who care.
How lovely for you. My experience with Christianity is decades of sneering, contemptuous brutality, and a lifetime fight for survival against it, all in a _deeply literal sense_.
Sounds pretty awful.
I remember at one anti-gay rally in Seattle in Safeco Field, they’d bussed people in from far away because they couldn’t get local support. We were protesting outside, I think this was in 2004 or 2005, and on the way in a little group of them started chanting, “It’s not fear, it’s contempt! It’s not fear, it’s contempt!” Such lovely people.
Remember “You know what GAY means, right? Got AIDS yet? HURR HURR HURR” They _really_ enjoyed the AIDS epidemic. Ran interference for it for _years_, since, after all, it’s _God’s will_.
Wouldn’t want to cure a fatal disease that was God’s Will after all.
The calls for concentration camps, wow, I haven’t thought of that in _years_. Ah, good times. By which I mean MAYBE IF YOU DON’T LIKE NAZI COMPARISONS YOU SHOULDN’T STEP IN AND IDENTIFY WITH A MOVEMENT THAT WANTED TO PUT QUEERS IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS.
Wtf?
Weren’t the 1980s _fun_?
Wtf is all this?
Everybody’s dying and the fundamentalists want AIDS to keep going and maybe build concentration camps to isolate the fags away from the good, normal people.
Really?
Learn some fucking history before you step in, that’s what the fuck is going on.
Wow.
Reagan’s reaction to the AIDS epidemic is the reason I despise him in a way that I’ve never despised Bush. He and his staff actively mocked the fact that gay people were dying, and made sure absolutely nothing was done to acknowledge them or help, and stood in the way of any attempt to improve treatment.
Never been my experience at all, ever. And I’ve seen a lot.
(Admittedly, that was a bit fringy, even for them. The death penalty for queers – that’s acceptable discussion _now_. But I haven’t heard concentration camps for queers for a while.)
Mitch, do you know anything about conversion therapy camps?
No, but I have heard of conversion therapy.
There are some who want to change lifestyles and that’s what it’s for.
Parents have their child kidnapped in the middle of the night, and they’re taken to an isolated camp, where they’re basically treated like they’re in prison. This actually happens, not hyperbole. They’re horribly abused while there.
That sucks.
Only time I’ve ever heard of parents doing that is when their kids are hooked on something.
A friend of mine was roped into the heroin epidemic at age 12 and was sent to rehab.
Conversion therapy is evil and doesn’t work. If someone honestly, consensually, wants to do it, and they’re an adult, then sure, whatever. But most of the time, it’s not something people just want to do. And if they weren’t a part of a culture that keeps telling them that their natural thoughts and feelings are somehow evil, then they might actually not want to be cured of something that’s not a disease.
Agreed Gwen.
A minor in a dangerous situation is different though.
I think we can manage not to make this conversation about 12-year-olds on heroin.
Rehab != conversion therapy. Rehab, at least, sometimes works. Conversion therapy, not so much. http://crooksandliars.com/2014/11/ex-leader-pray-away-gay-group-marries-his
I’ve lost friends to it, Cameron. It is necessary sometimes. As a parent I still believe it.
An lgbt minor who has parents that are actively hostile to their identity, to the point of abuse (and punishing or grounding them for being gay is abuse) is in a dangerous situation.
Heroin is completely not what we’re talking about here.
Heroin is a big deal, but not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the impact that evangelical homophobia has on real lives.
If a child is engaging in sex of any kind regularly, yeah that’s a problem.
I believe in not derailing a conversation about bad things evangelicals have done by bringing up rehab for 12-year-olds.
It can cause pregnancy, STI’s, emotional issues, etc. For a minor, yes it is a serious issue.
Mitch Canard “Christians get attacked too.” Bingo square #1. Get back to me when you can be evicted from your home or fired from your job for being a Christian, and have no legal recourse; when your children are routinely taken away from you because your “lifestyle” is considered to be de facto child abuse; when walking down the street with your spouse is an open invitation to physical assault. Until then, cry me a fucking river and STFU with your false equivalence.
I’m not raising my child to be a snowflake, but I don’t want anything awful to go down.
Hey, you know what can cause emotional issues? Being told by your parents that you’re going to hell, and that if you don’t come back from the military school they’re sending you off to cured of your gayness, you’ll no longer be part of the family and you get to live on the streets. I imagine that can cause some issues too.
It sure can Josh.
Conversion camps ARE something awful going down.
But the opposite is also true.
That was the 80s, though. They didn’t know what to do when AIDS stopped being a short-term death sentence. I mean, they did for a long time rely on, “Homosexuals want to RAPE YOUR CHILDREN, TURN THEM GAY, and GIVE THEM AIDS because it’s the ONLY WAY they can REPRODUCE.” That was a popular one.
They were _real_ big into that whole “newtype blood libel,” and spent decades declaring arguing – complete with fake science – that all queers were intrinsically paedophiles and wanted to RAPE YOUR KIDS.
Same argument they’re using now against trans kids. Do you know that the failed initiative here last year – that they’re already planning to run again next year – put a $5,000 bounty on transgendered students? Because THEY WANT TO RAPE YOUR CHILDREN.
Well, it’s 2016.
If they react differently if a teenager is having same sex gender sex than they would opposite gender sex, then there’s a problem. Having sex may be irresponsible (depends, honestly). But a youth simply having sex also isn’t what we’re talking about. Evangelical Christianity uses some bible verses as cover to treat LGBT people, including those within their own circle, horrificly. Hearing preachers or parents give sermons and lectures about how evil they are for liking boys instead of girls, or girls instead of boys, is mentally traumatizing. Believing you’re going to go to hell for something you can’t help, and shouldn’t have to, is traumatizing.
“Love the sinner, hate the sin” is propaganda. In reality, the culture actively encourages people to hate the sinner. It’s a huge problem.
And the evangelical political coalition has not been remotely shy about influencing legislature to discriminate against lgbt people. For lgbt people, the evangelical movement is an existential threat. They want to eliminate us. And they’re not afraid to use the government to do so.
A teen
As someone who’s been to church quite a bit, at many different types of churches over the years, I can tell you that’s bullshit. Propaganda.
http://time.com/4410894/rnc-conversion-therapy/
And of course, not every Christian, even every conservative Christian, feels that way. As alluded to above, if you don’t personally fit into that category, then you’re not the one we’re talking about. We’re talking about the people who are. They exist, and they’re politically powerful, both within Christian communities and within the US government. They’re influencing other governments, too. The Uganda “kill the gays” bill was an import from American evangelicals. Dolminionists who couldn’t get a death penalty for gays in the US, went to Uganda and convinced the people there to do so.
Pick a church and Go Sunday, see what happens. It won’t be anything like what you are describing whatsoever.
Depends on which church you go to. I promise you that churches like I”m describing exist.
Pick one.
Westboro Baptist.
Not that one Josh, LOL!
No True Scotsman, eh?
One I like is Christ Fellowship here in McKinney. They do services online which is kinda cool.
How about this guy’s church? http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/03/scott-lively-anti-gay-law-uganda
Did you know that it’s really common for LGBT youth to be kicked out of their home?
Or is he an exception, too?
That’s the guy. Was trying to remember his name.
Nah I’m more half French and quite a bit Cherokee. 😃
Yes I do Gwen.
And that’s not good.
That’s encouraged by evangelical christian culture. Even if you personally haven’t seen it being encouraged.
And if you want to oppose that attitude, then you need to completely and totally drop any Christian opposition to homosexuality, the same way you dropped support of slavery. And to encourage any other conservative Christians to do the same.
I don’t mean tolerate lgbt people, but think of it as a sin. Completely forget that you ever thought of it as a sin. Love and accept every LGBT member of society, and never once imply that they shouldn’t be LGBT, or that God thinks they shouldn’t. Erase that part of your culture. Move beyond it completely. Conservative Christians MUST do this. Because even the moderate “it’s a sin, but I”m okay with people who are gay” contributes to the harm, and the harm is massive.
I’m out of here for the sake of my blood pressure. Conservative evangelical homophobia was the major factor that led a college friend of mine to kill himself. His father disavowed him in the name of Christianity and he jumped off a bridge.
This is the thing: among queer people, Mitch, a lot of us have these stories. We know the person who killed himself or was made homeless by “Christian” homophobia. We’ve had friends and loved ones who’ve tried and tried to believe that their parents loved them, even while those parents were spitting contempt on their lives. We’ve seen the toll that takes on people we love, even as they do their best to practice compassion for the evangelicals who hate them. Even those of us who haven’t had to deal with this directly from our own families and immediate communities have been the support system for those who have.
And here you are insisting that we don’t know, and shilling for us to go to church. Oh, we know. We know just fine.
And now those evangelical homophobes are sad? They’re frightened and unnerved that maybe someone, somewhere, even in their own denominations — maybe a LOT of someones — might not be homophobic? There’s a little crack in their narrative? Those poor little violets.
Scott Lively, by the way, was also the author of _The Pink Swastika_, which asserted that it was gay men, not those find upstanding Germans, who were running the Nazi concentration camps.
The evangelical fundamentalist political group Concerned Women for America gave _that_ a lot of airtime in the 1990s too. The American Family Association, a similar group, liked it too.
And I have to go pack, but I’m going to hit on something Cameron said:
WE ALL HAVE THESE STORIES.
I’m willing to _hope_ that _some_ of us don’t _now_, some of the youngest people, in particular. How long they’ll go until they _get_ one of these stories, I don’t know – hopefully longer than we did.
But _wow_, do we all have them. It’s not a question of _whether_ we have one, but _how bad of one we have_.
And if the evangelical fundamentalists have their way, it’ll get worse rather than better.
And _these clowns_ that the New York Times profiled so sympathetically? These politically active anti-gay fundamentalist evangelicals? They’re of the right age to have been involved at _every_ step.
The cheering for AIDS, the jokes over LGBT deaths, the ideas about concentration camps, the newtype child-rapist blood libel, the initiative campaigns of the last three decades? Unless they came in late – which I doubt, you don’t become high-level exhibits in a national Presidential campaign out of nowhere – they’ve been there for all of it.
And during most of that time, “moderate” and “mainline” and even “liberal” Christianity’s response has been, “well, you _are_ Sinning Against God.” And shouts at me when I try to get them involved against this shit, because it is the _only_ face of active Christianity, and they’re trying to kill all of us.
_That_ is the face of Christianity. To me, and to many, many others, and _most_ queers – almost all of us over the age of, oh, 25.
And you _dare_ come in with this “so we’re Nazis now” tripe?
No. Not now. You’ve _always_ been our Nazis. That’s the reality; that’s the history.
Fucking deal with it. We’ve sure had to.
Mitch Canard “It doesn’t happen where I can see it, so you’re exaggerating.” Bingo square #2.
Mitch really. I remember being a queer teen in the 80s. Weekly sermons on how hellbound gays were destroying America and how God would punish us all for tolerating such wickedness. The president ignoring and delaying and not talking about it or allocating research funds. See A Normal Heart and get back to me. I wasn’t aware of most of the stuff in it (it’s semi autobiographical for one of the writers) because I was an isolated closeted teen in a small town where I was told God hated me and everyone hated me and they were right to do it.
“Suddenly, we were in the minority. That was kind of a scary feeling.” Okay, first of all, “The Moral Majority Isn’t” has been a slogan for a very long time for a very good reason. Conservative Christians always had power outsized to their numbers. And secondly, OH CRY MOAR you miserable little piles of hate.
*shaking my head*
Wishing I could shake theirs.