Social issues

SUMMARY
While Washington is focusing on economic and fiscal issues, the Republican party is launching a national jihad in the country’s state legislatures to guard against the entirely imaginary “threat” of gays and lesbians, the equally imaginary threat that Islamic sharia law will be imposed, pollute our schools with rightwing myths, and undermine Roe v Wade, which we examine in a separate article.

Notwithstanding the seemingly endless sex scandals involving Republicans, Ensign and Coburn, Chris “Too Sexy For My Shirt” Lee, Craig, Vitter and Foley etc, still the Republicans seem hell-bent on lecturing the rest of us on social values. Presumably heterosexual adultery is less dangerous to America than homosexual fidelity.

Having exploited homophobia to subvert the 2004 presidential election, the Republicans are sticking to the anti-LGBT playbook. They know they’re going to lose the war on same-sex marriage but they intend to exploit it to spin up their base in the meantime. They are fighting civil unions (Bill O’Reilly says civil unions are the first step to polygamy, and sex with turtles!), and civil unions are publicly opposed by Pawlenty, Huckabee, Daniels and Bachmann; Romney and Palin aren’t clear on the issue.

They are blaming all manner of national calamities and tragedies on God’s wrath in retaliation for America’s tolerance of gays. One Oklahoma representative even blamed the recession on the immorality represented by gay sex. They have accused one official of planning on “indoctrinating even elementary-age children in pro-homosexual ideology." Governor Walker in Wisconsin is pushing back on existing LGBT rights, trying to prevent gays from visiting their partners in the hospital.

Newt Gingrich, who rarely misses a chance to throw a grenade on social issues, insists that gays and atheists want to use violence and the power of government to impose their way of life on the rest of us. Weirdly, Fox chief Roger Ailes shares Newt's fear of gay violence.

This article is a magnificent rant by a progressive blogger who ridicules the evangelicals for lamenting that they’ve “lost” the same-sex marriage battle. “In everyday, Constitutional/legal terms, you haven't lost a damn thing. You still have everything you had before you declared that your war on gay rights was "lost." It's the GLBT community that has lost for years, decades, centuries. Lost jobs, lost family ties, lost money, lost homes, lost church support, lost benefits, lost friends, lost kids, lost dignity, lost lives. All orchestrated and perpetuated by people and organizations like you and yours….Tell me, Focus on the Family, cuz I'm curious: what did you Christians lose when you stopped stoning people to death? I know that goes back a ways, but you're experts at ancient history, so tell me: what did you lose when you made that conscious decision to start FLAGRANTLY IGNORING THE WRITTEN AND INVIOLABLE WORD OF GOD by not stoning people anymore?...You lost nothing. Except, perhaps, the label, "monstrous barbarians." And perhaps, by correctly interpreting the writing on the wall regarding the growing acceptance of GLBT Americans, you might one day lose the label "shrill, cruel, opportunistic bigots" by simply calling a halt to your war on gay people.”

Other candidates such as Bachmann and Santorum have long, long track records of anti-gay statements, which you can find in the articles dedicated to those candidates.

And they are laboring to start a fire over the sharia issue. Missouri, like a number of other states, is infested with wingnut Republicans who are terrified that sharia law will be imposed on them. Who exactly is going to impose it on them, is unclear; presumably Obama, according to the extremist subtext.

But as soon as they dive into this sharia issue, they get tangled up in their own hypocrisy. Because the people who want to ensure that Islamic religion isn’t rammed down our throats in the form of statutory law, are exactly the same yokels who want to ram Christian religion down our throats, with laws in abortion, school vouchers, school prayer, intelligent design, putting the Commandments in courtrooms, stem cell research, euthanasia, cloning, civil unions, HPV shots, contraception, sex education, faith-based initiatives, banning books, assisted suicide. In other words, religious law is okay if it’s Christian, but not if it’s Muslim.

So the Missouri wingnuts tried a new tack. Their legislative distinguishes between good old fashioned American law and “foreign law”. The idea being that Islamic law comes from furrin parts, but American law comes from America.

The problem is that American legal precepts don’t come from America either: it’s all imported. Our precepts on liberty, justice, equality and democracy were all plagiarized from philosophers and politicians in England, France, Holland, Germany, and Greece. And all the religion-based nonsense they try to ram down our throats, in the form of statutory law, goes back to the Bible, according to their own claims. Written in the Holy Land, and then codified by 1500 years of Christian leaders in the Vatican and elsewhere in Europe, before Columbus even got into his boat.

So they should say what they really mean: “We want America to be governed by Christian dogma as we interpret it”. Laws are to be written, not just by Christians, but hardcore conservative evangelical Christians: there are plenty of liberal Christians whose views on tolerance, charity and mercy are just not being heard. The aim here is government by the most backward, rigid religious leadership we have, and the destruction of any religious belief that might challenge it.

Congratulations, America! We’re raising a generation of Christian ayatollahs!

They are especially intent on hijacking our educational system and perverting it to their ends. They are rewriting history books and science books; they are donating money to colleges in exchange for controlling course content and hiring; they are organizing groups to target professors who offend rightwing students; one plucky teacher taught his kids geometry with an exercise that involved shooting the President: "He was talking about angles and said, 'If you're in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president,' " a one child said. Huckabee’s series of videos rewriting U.S. history with a rightwing slant were particularly laughable.They were also caught trying to rewrite Wikipedia in order to conform to Sarah Palin's idiotic misrepresentation of Paul Revere's ride.

Conservative groups have also declared war on public teachers and schools, or “government schools” as they call them; they want to privatize education and use vouchers as part of their “ school choice” effort. Chris Christie is working on a privatization plan for public schools in New Jersey. 

What to watch for next: a Canadian catholic school banned rainbows as too politically charged – watch for U.S. schools to try the same. Resist The Gay!

Another backdoor victory for the rightwing extremists on the education front: because Republican policies have forced states and counties to cut education budgets, schools are now charging fees for things that are supposed to be free. First they were just demanding that kids bring in crayons and scissors and soap and paper towels, but now parents are being hit with fees for extracurricular activities, honors courses, National Honor Society, AP courses, bus service, and even some basic course work. Some school systems are charging fat fees just to come to school on Day 1, adding registration fees, IT fees, processing fees. And you’ll notice that a lot of the things that cost extra now, are the things kids need to get into college and succeed, like extracurricular activities and AP. And what that means, of course, that the rich kids get an even bigger head start toward getting into college. The Republican response to such problems is to cut education funding even further, shift money to private schools which helps rich kids even more, and attacking teachers’ unions. Hat tip to Washington Monthly.


And lastly, a word to the LGBT activists who are whining about Obama's support for their cause.

Obama’s effort to secure fairer treatment for gays has received bitter opposition, not only from an entirely united Republican party which now controls the House of Representatives, but also conservative Democrats, the same people who blocked the public option. It would have been the easiest thing on the world for Obama to throw gays under the bus.

Instead, he fought. He stopped defending DOMA and committed to repealing it, which is all he can do under the law. He repealed DADT and sent military leader to Capitol Hill to ensure that he got it repealed. He signed the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill, signed the HIV treatment act, signed the UN declaration on sexual orientation, lifted the HIV entry ban, made passports easier for same-sex partners to get, gave $13 million to an LGBT program for kids in foster care, set up a national HIV strategy, gave guidance to 20,000 education institutions to stop bullying, and set up anti-bullying hotline.

Obama outraged LGBT opponents with his efforts within the federal government; ensuring fairer treatment for gays on benefits, jobs, census rules, visitation rights, housing and HUD grants, tenant rights, domestic violence, the Family and Medical Leave Act, long-term care under Medicaid, deporation rules, and the right to form
Gay-Straight Student Alliances in schools. Obama changed the culture of the federal government; he appointed liberal Supreme Court Justices, put an equality advocate on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, and sent senior officials out to fight for LGBT rights.

He defied LGBT opponents again in his unceasing effort to get out the message of equality. He fought for LGBT rights in speech after speech after speech, sent an anti-bullying message to 8 million people on the net, gave presidential medals of freedom to Harvey Milk and Billie Jean King, invited the shunned high school prom student to the White House, and put gays in PSAs for the census.

He overcame Republican efforts to block accreditation of the UN LGBT commission, and he helped change the rules so that the UN no longer condones killing gays.

Over and over he made history in the fight for LGBT rights: the first national study on housing discrimination against gays, first White House LGBT pride month celebration, first transgender DNC member, first administration to testify in favor of ENDA, first openly transgender administration officials, first transgender policy meeting, first anti-bullying summit, first anti-bullying website.

What issue has Obama done more to fight for, than gay rights? If he had fought as hard for health reform as he did for gays, we’d have the public option; if he had fought as hard for a bigger stimulus, we’d have more jobs.

It is time for the unrealistic LGBT whiners to stop weakening the president and start strengthening his position, so he can fight for them more effectively. It is because they sulked and stayed home in 2010 that we have a Republican Speaker.