Gingrich Says Gay Rights Questions Are Anti-Christian Bigotry

[MarkCharles]

Asking questions about gay rights is anti-Christian bigotry?

[cbayer]

1. Consider the source. Newt Gingrich says a lot of crazy (and wrong) things.

[skepticscott]

3. He's been around a long time

and he knows the audience. As much as he likes to hear himself talk, he wouldn't be saying this unless he had good reason to think it would resonate positively with a lot of other people.

[deacon_sephiroth]

5. it really is sad an pathetic

whenever you question the things people support or oppose and they instantly pick up the cudgel labeled "bigot", regardless of how uncalled for and innacurate and try beat you into submission or silence with it. What a loathsome, despicable tactic, worthy only of someone like Newt.

[cbayer]

6. I suspect, since you are replying to me, that there is some subliminal message here,

but I guess it's just too subtle.

[LonePirate]

2. What about questions related to divorce or mandating it?

[ButterflyBlood]

4. There was a Republican state rep here who compared the state Democratic party to the Soviet Union

For blocking a vote on an amendment to ban gay marriage. He claimed this was persecution of Christians similar to in the USSR and other communist countries.

[DevonRex]

7. He is blowing every dog whistle he can

to try and drum up support - any kind of support. He's a plain old bigot since he's clearly not a devout anything. Doesn't matter to him as long as somebody out there can be made to believe he hates gays because of God. And that fundies are persecuted. Newt couldn't care less about any of that. He just wants votes and for gays to have no rights, of course.

[Iggo]

8. Well then Christianity is antigay bigotry, Newt.

See how that works?

[LeftishBrit]

9. Uggghhhhh!

Why this obsession with hating gays? Why do Republicans equate Christianity with social conservativism - and they're so selective even about that; e.g. there would be at least as much justification for saying that it's 'anti-Christian bigotry' to make divorce easy and allow divorced people to remarry; but for obvious reasons Newt would not say that! Why are gays always the scapegoats?

[dmallind]

10. It is not an invention of theirs

Certainly Republicans stress parts of religious beliefs and attitudes that support their own agenda, but the idea that this is a gross mischaracterization of the real attitudes of religious people is false. Religiosity is very strongly connected to homophobia, and Republicans are exploiting that fact, not making it up. The largest scale meta-analysis of this with open web access I can find is as follows (cannot quote as text is encoded - see page 27 at link)

Religious Belief
n
% saying homosexual relationships always wrong
% saying never wrong

PROTESTANT
15846
82.3%
12.4%

CATHOLIC
6168
72.3%
19.6%

NO RELIGION
2105
44.5%
43.6%

MUSLIM
13 (acknowledged in the text as insufficient and obviously so - I include for completeness and to pre-empt predictable accusations of my non-existent intra-faith bias)
84.6%
15.4%

OTHER
1121
50.5%
38.5%


http://www.scribd.com/doc/53648927/A-Demographic-Study-of-Homophobia
Sarah Koon

[tama]

11. Patriarchal

values and attitudes of male superiority, made into religious creed. It's not the homosexual act that is so condemnable (actually very common among the militaristic authoritarian male superiority types, as is well known also in British culture) but betraying the front of "real men" whose aim is to keep women in the subservient position. A "real man" should never be in any position comparable to that of wife, nor act in other effeminate ways.