Godwin's Law May Apply

In which case, we could just send all copies of the book straight to /dev/null.

The illustrious Jonah Goldberg is "boldly" publishing an expose on the fascist left. It turns out, in a politically risky and "startling new perspective," that the real Nazis are not US conservatives, but US liberals, including FDR, who, ironically, was trying to get the US into a war with Hitler long before it was politically possible. Perhaps that was just because there can, as it were, be only one. Surely this is a dangerous position for Goldberg to espouse publicly, which is why we should all admire his courage, and his, er, ingenuity.

The publisher's page on the book boasts:

Impeccably researched and persuasively argued, LIBERAL FASCISM will elicit howls of indignation from the liberal establishment–and rousing cheers from the Right.

Yes, that's exactly what American political discourse needs more of: cheers and jeers. Thanks to the editors of the National Review for their contribution to rational conversation, which these days takes the form of mutual name-calling. Apparently, an early working title for the book was, Nunh-Uh! You are!

Great, we're all Nazis. Can we move on, now?

tags technorati : Liberal Fascism Fascism Jonah Goldberg Nazis

Gay Rights in . . . Colombia???

The Colombian legislature has voted to recognize same-sex unions.

"I think this is an incredible victory that should resonate across both continents, north and south," said Scott Long, director of the gay rights program at Human Rights Watch in New York. "It should definitely be an example to the United States. Colombia is a country that's Catholic, with a conservative government, and they still recognize that this is the right thing to do."

Colombia, like most Latin American countries, does not have fundamentalist groups with the kind of influence and funding to launch a national campaign against gay rights. But it does have a powerful Catholic Church, which argued that extending rights to same-sex couples would violate church doctrine. "This gives legal sanctity to families that are artificial and false," said José Galat, a prominent Catholic activist.

After a long public battle, advocates from groups such as Diverse Colombia slowly won over many lawmakers in Congress. Among those who support the bill is President Álvaro Uribe, a conservative Catholic. He is expected to sign the measure.

OK, there's still that matter of paramilitaries and of half of US military aid going right back to American contractors, but still . . .

Haggard Not Gay! At All!

What bullshit.

What I really want to know is what "completely heterosexual" actually means.

From Apartheid to Same-Sex Marriage

Maybe the US could enter into "constructive engagement" with this South African policy. What's the over-under on how long it takes W to complain about activist judges in South Africa?

Evangelical Gay-dar

Via the Revealer, a very interesting article from The Jewish Week on the evangelical movement and the electorate in the wake of the GOP mid-term election collapse and scandals around prominent evangelical leaders Mark Foley and Ted Haggard. A third of white evangelicals voted Dem in the election, signaling a problem in mobilizing the troops around Republican candidates as well as weakening evangelical power in the legislature (Rick Santorum's loss in particular is a huge defeat for evangelical Christians). The article also notes a potential cooling of the relationship between evangelicals and American Jews, pointing out that evangelical support for the state of Israel is seen as "replaceable."

But the best part is comparable to Monty Python's "How do you tell a witch?" sketch from "The Holy Grail":

Then, as if things could not get worse, there was the disgrace of [Traditional Values Coalition leader Lou] Sheldon's own friend and colleague, Rev. Ted Haggard, the Colorado mega-church leader and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, an even bigger pillar of Republican support on the Christian right. Sheldon disclosed that he and "a lot" of others knew about Haggard's homosexuality "for a while ... but we weren't sure just how to deal with it."

Months before a male prostitute publicly revealed Haggard's secret relationship with him, and the reverend's drug use as well, "Ted and I had a discussion," explained Sheldon, who said Haggard gave him a telltale signal then: "He said homosexuality is genetic. I said, no it isn't. But I just knew he was covering up. They need to say that."

Soooo, if he weighs the same as a duck, he must be made of wood. And therefore . . . a fairy!

The best (or worst) part is the bizarre sense that the genetic aspects of homosexuality would be what render it morally acceptable. Here again we have the whole debate about what is "natural" behavior. But that's for another post.

The Dark Side of the Evangelical Force

Haggard has more or less confessed, although he continues to be vague about what exactly he has to apologize for.

In a letter that was read to the congregation of the New Life Church by another clergyman, Haggard apologized for his acts and requested forgiveness.

"I am so sorry for the circumstances that have caused shame and embarrassment for all of you," he said, adding that he had confused the situation by giving inconsistent remarks to reporters denying the scandal.

"The fact is I am guilty of sexual immorality. And I take responsibility for the entire problem. I am a deceiver and a liar. There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life," he said.

Right, a dark side. Repulsive, even. Would that be the gay side? Or the john side? Or perhaps the meth side? Or maybe the point is that using meth, paying for sex, and having sex with people of the same sex are morally equivalent.

Has he learned anything from this experience? It would appear not.

More On Evangelicals, Sex, and Bigotry

Bitch | Lab posts from Rapture Ready an article about a new book on evangelical feminism. Who knew there was such a thing? A brief excerpt of a brief article:

[Wayne] Grudem, author of numerous books and co-founder and former president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, is research professor of Bible and theology at Phoenix Seminary in Arizona. In his new book, he discusses 25 patterns of argument employed by evangelical feminists and shows how each one dismisses the authority of Scripture.

[Albert] Mohler [president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary] raises the question, “If the New Testament is to be superseded by a later reality based in a more modern understanding, how can the church justify relativizing some texts without relativizing others?”

It can't, but of course these guys have not understood that "Biblical literalism" is already "a more modern understanding." Is there a text in this religion?

Grudem argues that the hermeneutic, or method of interpreting Scripture, used to advocate evangelical feminism leads to the normalization of homosexuality as well. And the approval of homosexuality, Grudem writes, “is the final step along the path to liberalism.”

And here I always thought that gay rights was the first slouching step on the path toward Gomorrha, not the last! It turns out the first step toward recognizing gays as human beings is recognizing women as human beings.

The Culture of the Evangelical Closet

Jeff Sharlet notices the same thing I was thinking about this:

[T]he story is bigger than Ted; statewide, he's one of the key forces behind two new anti-gay amendements. Nationwide, as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, he sets the political tone for the Christian conservative movement at an administrative level broader than the influence of better-known figures such as Jerry Falwell.

If the story is true, Ted's a hypocrite of the worst kind; then again, he's also another victim of the very closet over which he publicly stands guard, as are all the New Life church members he's led into it. That story may not make the mainstream media. Indeed, it seems unlikely that Ted's downfall will be reported with any more nuance than that of Mark Foley's political collapse. Sex, it seems, blinds the press to politics.

The rest of his post is also worth a look, particularly his repost of his Harper's article about Haggard from 2005. Note especially:

He moved the church to a strip mall. There was a bar, a liquor store, New Life Church, a massage parlor.

How . . . convenient.

His congregation spilled out and blocked the other businesses. He set up chairs in the alley. He strung up a banner: SIEGE THIS CITY FOR ME, signed JESUS.

OK, here I'm going to go all pedantic on you: "siege" is a noun. Use either "seize" or "besiege," not "siege." And these are the people who complain about education in this country?

Oh, yeah, and role models. Watch out for the role models.

The Politics of Outing Evangelicals

Turns out Ted Haggard is gay, or at least it sure looks that way. Along with James Foley, this would be two prominent leaders of the Homophobic Community and their Homophobic Agenda. In general, I'm not in favor of outing people. But there's something really problematic about Haggard's and Foley's behavior, more problematic, I think, than outing them. It's not simply a matter of hypocrisy, like having a pr0n library when you head up an organization that fights pr0n. There's some serious and bizarre self-hatred going on here, which you suspect has deep roots in the evangelical Christian community these guys grew up in. I don't know the personal childhood histories of Haggard and Foley, and I'm certainly not making excuses for either of them. But what do you prove with them when you out them? That they hate themselves? There's news. But maybe it's about hatred generally, and here maybe about self-hatred taught and learned from childhood in ostensibly loving but insidiously hate-filled communities, self-hatred that is then projected out onto the rest of the world, so that you do your penance for your own sin by punishing and even terrorizing others.

OK. Now I feel better about this. But it's still pretty fucked up, the whole thing.

Straight Folks: Be Afraid (of Gays), Be Very Afraid

An appalling ad campaign running recently on WV television stations by the West Virginia Family Foundation uses the oldest, most transparent scare tactics in the book to promote a constitutional amendment defining marriage as straight. I will try to get the ad posted to youtube if i can get it captured. In the meantime, visit the WVFF site and click on the link to watch the video. It's thoroughly cheesy, but disgusting nonetheless.

In the end, especially since the legislation was defeated, I am inclined to see this campaign (or at least its failure) as a positive sign. Not as positive, of course, as a religious campaign favoring the rights of gays and lesbians to marry, or separating marriage as a religious institution from marriage as a civil institution (the solution I prefer). But I think these people really believe they're losing. And I think they're right about that. Back in the day, Jesse Helms and George HW Bush could trot out thinly veiled racism to ice their election wins. Now, even in WV, the Christian right-wing can't even go full-blown homophobic and win.

And if you're gay and want help, by the way, the WVFF has a spiffy directory of groups that can help you overcome your abominable sodomitical ways. God luvs u, but He hates your sins! Can you imagine the New Coming Out Day? Come out of your homosexual shell! Inside every fairy/dyke is a straight woman-loving man/man-loving woman! Let the real, straight you smell the air, feel the sunshine, and bask in the love of the fag-hating God.

Who, you surely know by now, also hates shrimp.