Chris Hedges: RW Fundie Anti-gay Crusade is "Far Scarier Than You Think"

[daaron]

http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/155633/hedges%3A_the_christian_right%27s_crusade_against_gays_is_far_scarier_than_you_think/

The sentencing of Dharun Ravi for the hateful abuse that may have driven his gay roommate at Rutgers, Tyler Clementi, to commit suicide, or Barack Obama’s public acceptance of gay marriage, prevents many of us from seeing that life for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people is getting worse—much worse.

No one understands this better than the gay activist and pastor Mel White. White, along with his husband and partner of 30 years, Gary Nixon, founded Soulforce, an organization committed to using nonviolent resistance to end religion-based oppression. White and hundreds of Soulforce volunteers protest outside megachurches that preach hatred and bigotry in the name of religion. White travels to communities where young gays, lesbians, bisexuals or transgender people have committed suicide. He holds memorial services for them in front of the church doors. He accuses the pastors of these churches of murder. His books “Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America” and “Holy Terror: Lies the Christian Right Tell Us to Deny Gay Equality,” are two of the most important works that examine the innate cruelty and proto-fascism of the Christian right. White, more than perhaps any other preacher in the country, has pulled young men and women back from the brink of despair, from succumbing to the tragic fate of Tyler Clementi. And White is scared.

“What kind of environment creates a Dharun Ravi who would carry out that kind of bullying, as well as a kid like Tyler who would become a victim of that kind of bullying?” White asked when I reached him by phone at his home in Long Beach, Calif. “It is society. At its heart it is the church. The churches should be convicted, not just Ravi. He’s just an extension of the hatred that people feel about this threat, this gay threat. Pope Benedict XVI should be on trial. Richard Land from the Southern Baptists should be on trial. Religious leaders, Protestant and Catholic, should be on trial. They made this happen, but too few Americans make the connection.”

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This is the kind of liberal Christian pushback of which we need so much MORE.

[daaron]

1. The last paragraph says it all:

“Too many of my sisters and brothers in the gay community don’t seem to understand the power of religion,” White lamented. “They have been rejected by religion. They hate the idea of religion. Therefore, they’re not going to deal with religion, which is fatal, because religion is the heart of homophobia. Without religion there would be no homophobia. What other source of homophobia is there but six verses in the Bible? When Bible literalists preach that LGBT people are going to hell they become Christian terrorists. They use fear as their weapon, like all terrorists. They are seeking to deny our religious and civil rights. They threaten to turn our democracy into a fundamentalist theocracy. And if we don’t reverse the trend, there is the very real possibility that in the end we will all be governed according to their perverted version of biblical law.”

[Plantaganet]

13. Wow.

He absolutely nails it here. Brilliant.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. I'm not convinced that all homophobia comes from religion

Sure, it's the major cause of it in the USA and many other countries (eg Iran), and the chief thing keeping homophobia going. But, for instance, communist Albania, the one state that really tried to enforce atheism as the official state stance, still made homosexual acts illegal:

Another criticisms is that Hoxha outlawed homosexuality. This is a criticism of Hoxha that most Hoxhaists agree with, but to extent, and for different reasons. First, one must keep in mind that very few places in the world understood homosexuality as they do today. From the early days of Marx and Engels, there was much homophobia among the socialist movement, even; Engels was especially homophobic. The reason for this was that the socialists, such as Hoxha, saw homosexuality as something from the “traditional world,” and a product of bourgeois decadence, primarily based on the fact that the upper class men of Roman and Greek society would engage in homosexual behavior. Hoxha also saw homosexuality as a form of gender chauvinism. There are however, some accounts that Hoxha himself may have been a homosexual, but it is not known.

http://theredstarvanguard.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/a-brief-guide-to-hoxhaism/

[daaron]

15. Ah, but "without religion" -->

the veritable font of all European somethings "from the traditional world" - would those dirty commies have come to the erroneous conclusion that homosexuality was a cultural construct?

It seems more like commie Albania is an exception that proves the rule. One must consider the context in which the erroneous conclusion was drawn.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. Or is it a 'hatred of the other' that various religions built into themselves?

I don't think there's any way to say what came first - homophobia, or religions that support homophobia. But we do know that homophobia can survive in a state without religion to support it.

[daaron]

17. Even in atheist communist states, religions have persisted.

Religions are the cultural backdrops upon which the modern commie-capital drama has played out, whether in Albania or China. Sorry, but the example provided just doesn't generalize well, whereas the religious explanation does. That pushes me, for one, to give the latter greater credence than the former.

[Plantaganet]

18. Well put. n/t

[Zorra]

19. I would say that this is a perfect illustration of how religion has so deeply ingrained

homophobia into the collective consciousness of the majority of individuals raised in Judeo-Christian-Islamist based societies throughout history.

These revolutionaries apparently used logical fallacies to justify their deeply ingrained homophobia, a homophobia that was one of the major delusions derived from the very things that they believed needed to be eliminated.

[JustAnotherGen]

2. My feeling is

Come on home - to the Unitarian Church. Are you human? Then are doors are open.

Sorry for evangelical preachy-stuff but it is how I feel, live, and believe.

[daaron]

4. That's not the solution.

Pastor White already attends a church that doesn't hate him. He's doing so much MORE for The Cause than merely leaving nasty churches - he's targeting them for protest and shaming, and calling on other believers to do the same.

[HockeyMom]

3. Hate Speech begets Hate Acts

It is as simple as that.

[backscatter712]

5. Mind if I spread this around a bit?

This is something IMHO of interest in GD.

[daaron]

7. By all means! nt

[Zorra]

6. Great piece. Thanks so much for posting this, daaron!

[kestrel91316]

8. Wasn't Mel White among the most hateful of the RW fundie camp at one time??

[daaron]

9. Hm. I don't know. Was he? Any link on that? nt

[kestrel91316]

10. I just have a vague memory of him being an uber fundie at one point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_White

I was right. He used to be a writer for Falwell and Robertson and Graham.

[Zorra]

11. Chris mentions this in the article posted in the OP:

White, before he accepted his homosexuality as a gift from God, ghost-wrote autobiographies for Christian-right leaders including Falwell. White and Nixon, knowing that White’s old clients were the primary sources of anti-gay rhetoric, moved to Lynchburg. They set up house across the street from Falwell’s megachurch. They attended services and stood together in silent protest as Falwell delivered anti-gay rants from the pulpit. White watched as Liberty University rose to dominate Lynchburg.

[daaron]

12. Interesting! Guess he knows what he's talking about, then.

I love it when RW fundies get deprogrammed. They bring that old timey passion to a better cause.