Rise of the New Right

[Linus]

I'm watching this on MSNBC right now. It's an interesting piece but I wonder how much stuff like this creates divisiveness within the US by creating an "us" vs "them" ideology? This is something that seems to have grown (probably starting in the Reagan era and continued from there). Some of the sound bites have been interesting thus far ("The islamics are taking over everything in the US! The President isn't even Christian!").

What is also interesting is that the Militia numbers have tripled in membership and number of groups (from the 300s in the 80s to 500s+ today).

Anyone else watching this?

[Toughy]

*raising hand*

[atomiczombie]

I am too. I don't see this program as contributing to the "us" vs. "them" mentality, but a shedding of light on something that is and has been taking place already. I don't think shedding light on it perpetuates it necessarily. It can get us to think critically about what is going on in the country, and what is going on is really disturbing to me. So many lies are being causally flung around within in the political right. I think that racism is a particularly nasty component since Pres. Obama took office. It also seems to me like a bunch of whiney people complaining that they don't want to pay to help others in need, and want to own and use as many guns as they want. It gets framed in these ludicrious lies about the President's legitimacy, questioning his loyalty to America, that he is a socialist, and on and on. The people who tell these lies and the ones who are stupid enough to believe this crap are the ones creating the "us" vs. "them" ideology. What is disturbing to me is that these extremists are the ones getting all the press, because this stuff gets higher ratings. So yes, the press does in that respect steer the focus there. However, this particular documentary I find important as a jumping off point for discussions such as this one.

[Linus]

I wonder, however, how many people who watch it are the ones who don't know. I think the majority of who could benefit from watching it are watching Beck instead.

[Greyson]

I posted this article in this thread because in my opinion it is a spot on example of where "the us vs. them" way of thinking and living leads. I also think the title is interesting. Notice it is "Gay Rights Movement Getting More Confrontational with the Religious Right" and not the other way around, "Religious Right Getting More Confrontational with the LGBTQ community."

I suspect many of the same people in the "Religious Right" also participate in attempting to shape policy and laws in non religious right thinking movements, organizations.
_____________________________________________


Voice of OC - Orange County's Nonprofit Investigative News Agency


ADAM ELMAHREK

Monday, June 21, 2010

As religious activists prepare a conference this week in Irvine aimed at praying away homosexuality, gay rights activists are confronting the gathering on several fronts, saying its message doesn't lead to understanding and instead fuels hate.

Unlike past decades, gay rights activists say they increasingly are fighting back against misperceptions that fly in the face of science and the U.S. Constitution.

It's an extension of the gay civil rights movement, they said, which is confronting religious teachings that tend to marginalize members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Exodus International, the organization putting on the conference this week at Concordia University, promotes "freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ," according to its website.

Jeff Buchanan, director of the Exodus Church Association, says the annual conferences are to "promote a biblical worldview" and to offer an alternative for gays and lesbians struggling with their identities.

Over the weekend, gay rights activists held a counter-conference in Irvine, broadcasting a different message -- you can't pray away the gay.

In the biblical sense, "exodus" means a journey of escape by a large group from oppression or a hostile environment -- as in the story of the Israelites' Exodus from slavery in Egypt.

But critics -- including an Exodus co-founder -- say Exodus International's ideology leads to the hostile environment that gay rights activists have been trying for decades to unweave from the social fabric. They also say attempts to treat homosexuals as having a disease is dangerous and could lead to self-harm or suicide.

"It morphed into something very different than what we intended," said Exodus co-founder Michael Bussee. "I think something very dangerous."

Bussee left Exodus in 1979 -- three years after he started the organization -- when he became disillusioned with the idea that anybody, much less himself, could become "ex-gay."

Bussee also has personal experience with the consequences of promoting ideas that give way to a social stigma against gays and lesbians. While Bussee was in his hometown in Riverside in 2002, he and a gay friend, Jeffrey Owens, were attacked and stabbed by men shouting "faggot" at him. Bussee was beaten and stabbed in the back, but he survived.

Owens died on the operating table.

"I think the guys that attacked me and killed my friend were taught that gays are going to hell and need to repent," Bussee said.

Although "it's not cool to be homophobic anymore," as Bussee put it, hatred against gays and lesbians lingers in the U.S. -- one Bussee says that shouldn't be encouraged.

"When you repeat the message that gays are sinful, diseased and broken," Bussee said, "when you keep repeating that message to people who already feel marginalized ... it fuels violence against them."

There were 11 hate crimes against gays and lesbians reported in Orange County in 2008, according to an Orange County Human Relations Commission hate crime report.

Karen Ocamb, in a piece for the Huffington Post, noticed a stark uptick in Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties in the number of hate crimes against gays and lesbians in 2008, which was the year Proposition 8 was on the ballot.

Proponents of Proposition 8 argued, among other things, that traditional marriage is threatened by gay marriage and that sex education in schools would be perverted with descriptions of homosexual acts.

With that kind of opinion prevalent on the airwaves, hate crimes against gays and lesbians in Los Angeles County rose by 33 incidents, according to the county's Commission on Human Relations.

And in Santa Clara County, half of the violent crimes reported in 2008 were hate crimes against gays and lesbians -- up from 15 percent the year before.

Gay rights activists say they're winning the battle against homophobia in the U.S., but groups like Exodus International undermine that struggle. They say Exodus doesn't understand the social harm its approach unleashes.

A history of anti-gay sentiment in Orange County offers one example. A 1978 California ballot initiative that would have banned gays and lesbians from working in public schools was proposed by John Briggs, who was a Republican state senator from Orange County.

A majority of statewide voters rejected it.

One worst-case scenario has recently manifested in Uganda, an African nation that not only criminalizes homosexual acts, but might also see a law passed that would impose the death penalty on people convicted of them.

The month before the introduction of the bill in early 2009, speakers at a workshop in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, made sweeping accusations against gays, saying that gay men had tendencies to molest children and that there was a gay agenda to destroy the marriage-based society.

That workshop featured, among other American evangelicals, Exodus board member Don Schmierer.

Exodus President Alan Chambers has since released a public apology for Schmierer's involvement with the conference:

Criticism is easy to come by at Exodus. We are a large and diverse organization made up of many members. Our growth over the years has caused us to not always know what the hand or foot are doing, which sometimes causes us to look like we are "all butt." That's humanity for you, even Christian humanity.
Mainstream psychology shuns treatment of homosexuality as an illness, and the American Psychological Association says guideline No. 1 when giving psychotherapy to gays and lesbians is that "psychologists understand that homosexuality and bisexuality are not indicative of mental illness."

Psychology professor Daniel Helminiak, who spoke at the counter-conference, says that engaging in behavior control to suppress homosexual feelings is psychologically damaging.

"Sexuality is a central part of what a person is," Helminiak said. "Unless somebody makes peace with it -- all other personal growth dead ends."

And Chris Prevatt, an activist who has been involved with gay rights and HIV awareness causes since the mid-1980s, says the Exodus ideology gives gays and lesbians a hopeless view of life.

"They give these people they supposedly want to help two choices -- change or be damned," Prevatt said.

But Buchanan says there are no adverse psychological effects as a result of Exodus' message or its methods. He says suppressing homosexual feelings is "no different than anyone that is trying to live up to biblical standards" and that the idea that sexual identity defines a person with that kind of totality is overblown.

"I am more than just my sexual identity, and I don't see this as a strictly sexual identity issue," Buchanan said.

Critics say that because the approach doesn't work, leaders of groups like Exodus often turn out to be hypocrites.

Wayne Besen, a gay rights activist, caught John Paulk -- former chairman of the board of Exodus International in North America -- at a gay bar flirting with men. Besen snapped a photo of Paulk at the bar, and Exodus ended up firing Paulk.

Then there's George Rekers -- who sat on the board of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. Rekers was caught at an airport with a male prostitute he allegedly found on a male escort website.

Rekers' excuse? He hired the man to help him with his luggage.

"George Rekers was an industrial-sized nail in their coffin," Besen said.

Buchanan dismissed the actions of Rekers and Paulk, saying they were irrelevant to the cause.

"It does not discredit the experience of hundreds of thousands of men and women regarding our message," Buchanan said.

Not all Christian denominations view gays through the Exodus International lens. Episcopalians, for example, have elected two openly gay bishops in the past seven years,

Bussee is a Christian, and so is Helminiak.

Reverend Paul Tellstrom of the Irvine United Congregational Church, which hosted the counter-conference, said Exodus' conference mirrors prejudices still ingrained in American culture and has nothing to do with Scripture.

Tellstrom said his church has come a long way since its members hanged women during the Salem Witch Trials. He said a Congregational church was the first to ordain an African-American, Lemuel Haynes, as minister in 1785, and the first to ordain a woman as minister, Antoinette Brown, in 1853.

Tellstrom points to his church's progressive interpretation of the Bible as proof that churches can change their positions on issues over time.

"When you look in retrospect, I think we've been right on the main issues of justice," Tellstrom said.


http://voiceofoc.org/oc_south/irvine...cc4c03286.html

[Diva]

I'm not going to quote the whole article, Greyson, but one line struck me.....

Bussee said that he didn't feel it was cool to be homophobic any longer....

Oh dear. When did he say THAT? Because I feel ~ to the religious right, at least ~ they feel it IS 'cool' to be homophobic.

And that mindset is now (and has been) filtering into the rhetoric of the GOP's platform, as there are portions of their 2010 "agenda" which states (paraphrased) that homosexuality should be punishable by jail.....that marriage should only take place between a "natural man and a natural woman".....and that anyone who performs a marriage of anyone else should also be thrown in jail.

Now THIS ~ in 2010 ~ is disgusting AND scary to me.

[Linus]

Originally Posted by Diva

I'm not going to quote the whole article, Greyson, but one line struck me.....

Bussee said that he didn't feel it was cool to be homophobic any longer....

Oh dear. When did he say THAT? Because I feel ~ to the religious right, at least ~ they feel it IS 'cool' to be homophobic.

And that mindset is now (and has been) filtering into the rhetoric of the GOP's platform, as there are portions of their 2010 "agenda" which states (paraphrased) that homosexuality should be punishable by jail.....that marriage should only take place between a "natural man and a natural woman".....and that anyone who performs a marriage of anyone else should also be thrown in jail.

Now THIS ~ in 2010 ~ is disgusting AND scary to me.

Actually, it appears you are not paraphrasing. At least not for the Texas GOP: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_619601.html

[waxnrope]

Originally Posted by Diva

Bussee said that he didn't feel it was cool to be homophobic any longer....

Oh dear. When did he say THAT? Because I feel ~ to the religious right, at least ~ they feel it IS 'cool' to be homophobic.

And that mindset is now (and has been) filtering into the rhetoric of the GOP's platform, as there are portions of their 2010 "agenda" which states (paraphrased) that homosexuality should be punishable by jail.....that marriage should only take place between a "natural man and a natural woman".....and that anyone who performs a marriage of anyone else should also be thrown in jail.

Now THIS ~ in 2010 ~ is disgusting AND scary to me.

It is scary, DIVA. I feel as if, since Reagon, perhaps, there has been a progressive back sliding of hard fought liberties. It is scary to be queer, it is scary to be a POC, it is scary to be a progressive Christian, it is scary to be a Muslim. Hell! it is scary to be a vegetarian! Seriously, I keep looking around for the hoses and attack dogs again ... if we do not ban together, all of us outsiders, it seems that we will be picked off, one "issue" at a time ... just saying.

[Mitmo01]

Originally Posted by Diva

I'm not going to quote the whole article, Greyson, but one line struck me.....

Bussee said that he didn't feel it was cool to be homophobic any longer....

Oh dear. When did he say THAT? Because I feel ~ to the religious right, at least ~ they feel it IS 'cool' to be homophobic.

And that mindset is now (and has been) filtering into the rhetoric of the GOP's platform, as there are portions of their 2010 "agenda" which states (paraphrased) that homosexuality should be punishable by jail.....that marriage should only take place between a "natural man and a natural woman".....and that anyone who performs a marriage of anyone else should also be thrown in jail.

Now THIS ~ in 2010 ~ is disgusting AND scary to me.

I agree Ms. Diva it is totally disgusting and utterly indefensible that in this day and age the GOP has to keep trying to regulate everyones morality. I mean hasnt the American public amply smacked that shit down time and time again....I dont know anyone from any political viewpoint that appreciates anyone telling them what they can or cant do and the Republican party and the christian right wingers seem to continually hold on to this platform hoping that people will take that shit seriously.......IMHO they are all fucking cukoo...

[Diva]

Turino just posted > > [nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z57oWR84R4"]YouTube- Texas Trying To Ban Oral Sex?[/nomedia]< < on Facebook....thought I'd share.....


Side bar: It might ALmost be worth it to see them arrest my ex~husband.

[Apocalipstic]

Sadly Linus, it has always been us and them in the US.
it freaks me the hell out that the hard core right is being given so much airtime though.

[Apocalipstic]

What I am trying to say is that there were no good ole days when things were better, just that we have WAY better news coverage now.

So I agree with you, I think the media stirs things up worse, just like Hearst did back when he controlled the papers and radio.

Just now it's many channels on television 24/7.

[Diva]

Here is the web site for the Log Cabin Republicans ........

In light of the fact that toward the bottom of their home page there are 3 articles about Gay Marriage (which I admit I have yet to read), I'm wondering what's going on in their collective minds right now in regard to the Texas GOP platform stance......

Contradictory?

ContraDICKtory?

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Linus

I'm watching this on MSNBC right now. It's an interesting piece but I wonder how much stuff like this creates divisiveness within the US by creating an "us" vs "them" ideology? This is something that seems to have grown (probably starting in the Reagan era and continued from there). Some of the sound bites have been interesting thus far ("The islamics are taking over everything in the US! The President isn't even Christian!").

What is also interesting is that the Militia numbers have tripled in membership and number of groups (from the 300s in the 80s to 500s+ today).

Anyone else watching this?

I watched this over the weekend (and will probably watch it again when I'm less distracted) and found it interesting although, quite honestly, I think this documentary comes a day late and a dollar short. The MSM is behaving as if this is a new phenomena on the American scene when, in fact, this movement has long and deep roots in American conservatism. As far as the 'us vs. them' thing; at some point, you have to realize that they DO mean you harm. I don't consider it us vs them to state what is plainly obvious--there is a non-trivial part of American conservatives who want to make America active hostile to queer people. Acknowledging this isn't divisive, it is merely talking about reality in unvarnished terms.

By actively hostile, I mean this; for the most part, the state of play in America vis a vis queers is one of spotty but largely passive hostility. Sodomy, for instance, is currently legal in all fifty states and in most states being queer will not automatically lose you custody of your children. The Texas GOP would like to change *both* of those and since it's in the Texas GOP platform in 2010 you can bet those provisions will also be in the 2012 national GOP platform. Now I, for one, appreciate the Texas GOP for being so out-front because it makes it easier to point out what they are doing. However, it is disturbing that they feel so comfortable putting out such a document that is so blatant in its bigotry. Again, this isn't 'us vs. them' any more than claiming that the segregationists in Alabama circa 1961 were bigots and in the wrong.

While mainstream conservatives bear quite a bit of responsibility for this, I also have to point a finger at the mainstream media and at liberals for letting this go unchecked. The mainstream media has, for about two decades done this false 'objectivity' that ends up being 'report what one person says, then report what another person says but don't actually follow-up'. So we now have a media that behaves like this: "Sarah Palin said that the sky is green and the moon is made of cotton balls. Some "scientists" say that the sky is blue and that the moon is made of rock." Those two statements are then treated as if either one could be equally true. The problem with this is that we have now raised a generation of folks who no longer even have the ability to determine whether a statement is true or false nor do they see any reason why they should *care*. It doesn't really matter if global climate change is *actually* happening, as long as Lord Monckton is willing to get up and say it isn't people will say "well, it might not be happening so the envirowhackos are trying to scare people so they can have a One World Government". It doesn't matter if that statement is crazy on its face, crazy has come in from the cold in American politics.

Worse yet, liberals have sat pretty much silently by and allowed this to happen. From teaching creationism in schools to climate change to gay rights liberals AND progressives have fallen back or, worse, ignored the threat. They did this by minimizing the influence of folks like Pat Robertson, making the religious right out to be nothing more than a few hundred people, meeting in a basement church and, as such, safely ignored.

So now we have a conservative movement with its own, parallel media universe that is large and has reach and that movement has been seized by the most extreme right-wingers available in the country. Because of this, conservatism has become unmoored from anything that might be generously called reality with drastic consequences for us all.

Chris Matthews (who I really, really wish would lose his job because he's a horrible interviewer) has done a public service in highlighting what the New Right believes in their own words but it comes a day late and a dollar short.

Cheers
Aj

[Nat]

As a Texan who loves her deeply flawed state, I'm really concerned and upset about this bs. It's almost too upsetting to think about and it makes me feel fundamentally unsafe.

[Kobi]

I dont find anything new or different in the current attempt to exploit the unhappiness of Americans for political advantage.

Since Murdock assumed control of the media outlets and given his ultraconservative beliefs, it should not be surprising that the new right is getting so much airtime.

What is sad is that they dont pick on just one group i.e. gays or blacks or latinos or women....they spread it out so they hit as many potentially useful markets as they can. The sad part is people are so wrapped up in their own misery and need for change that they cannot see that they are being preyed upon and exploited.

And, those seeking control know how stupid American voters can be. They are counting on that stupidity to take them right into office. Sad thing is a lot of them will be voted in.

[Greyson]

I am posting this in this thread because the Texas GOP Platform was noted in previous posts.

_____________________________________________


TAKE ACTION: Tell Republican National Committee to Reject Anti-LGBT Texas Republican Party Platform
By Michael Cole
June 24th, 2010 at 1:08 pm

HRC today condemned the Texas State Republican Party for including anti-LGBT language in its 2010 State Party Platform. The language, which goes far beyond the usual conservative talking points on “traditional family values,” sinks to a new low of intolerance and hate. We’re calling on RNC Chairman Michael Steele to publicly repudiate the anti-LGBT language in the State Party Platform and we want you to do the same.

Texas GOP Platform:

Calls for making it a felony to issue a marriage license to, or perform a marriage ceremony for same-sex couples;
Calls on Congress to withhold jurisdiction from the Federal Courts in cases involving family law – a clear violation of the separation of powers in the U.S. Constitution;
Opposes the recognition of and granting of benefits to domestic partners;
Opposes any and all employment protections for LGBT people;
Opposes the legalization of private, consensual sex;
Indicates possible anti-transgender bias with the terms “natural man” and “natural woman”;
States: “Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable ‘alternative’ lifestyle in our public education and policy, nor should “family” be redefined to include homosexual ‘couples.’”
Texas has failed to meet benchmark measures to protect LGBT citizens, including: employment protections, hospital visitation rights, protection in housing, joint-adoption, and relationship recognition. In 2003 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Texas’ anti-sodomy laws. The 2010 State Republican Party Platform advocates violating this decision and puts Texas even further behind the times.

The outrageous platform doesn’t stop with attacking LGBT citizens. It also calls for: Congress to evict the United Nations from the United States, opposing legislation allowing stem cell research, reversing Roe v. Wade, prohibiting more than three years of bilingual education for students, and repealing the No Child Left Behind law and eliminating the U.S. Department of Education.

Take Action Now and tell Chairman Steele to reject this anti-LGBT, anti-family platform.



http://www.hrcbackstory.org/2010/06/take-action-tell-republican-national-committee-to-reject-anti-lgbt-texas-republican-party-platform/