Back to Basics with the Religious Right

Jeremy Hooper over at Good As You has posted some audio from a teleconference the opposition held on November 6th, after Prop 8′s passage was confirmed. It’s about 15 minutes long with the full hour at the end of the post.

I’m not going to post it here, but I’d urge everyone to follow this link and listen to the entire thing and digest it. It’s pretty frightening to me that these ministers of Christian churches speak so nonchalantly about what they’ve just accomplished. The abject dehumanization of an entire group of people is shocking.

I was preparing this post last night and after five hundred angry words came out in ten minutes, I decided to put it away for a few hours. The above is all that remains of the original post, which asked for an explanation of such hatred. When I looked it over this morning I realized that I already know the explanation: We make their lives more difficult.

We’re different than they are in a way that they can’t fathom, and that makes them uncomfortable. We aren’t causing them any harm. All this talk about defending marriage and defending children and defending democracy is bluster and they know it. They have to. Their arguments are that nonsensical, enough so that they’ve resorted to lying again and again and again.

And again.

Here’s the thing, supposedly Christian bigots and other assorted gay bashers: We’re not going anywhere. We will have marriage rights, and we will have equal protection, and we will be able to walk the street without fear. That’s what America’s supposed to stand for.

I hear the word “traditional” thrown around a lot lately. It’s entered the gay-hater’s lexicon as a stand-in for quality. There’s this notion that the older a law, the more likely it is to be good and pure. Here’s what Thomas Jefferson had to say about the matter, taken from his memorial in Washington, DC:

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions changed, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

We will have equality. It’s coming whether you’re comfortable with it or not, just like women got the right to vote. It’s coming whether you agree with it or not, just like The Little Rock Nine went to a desegregated school. It’s coming.

What makes the fight so frustrating is that I think they know that. They’re just getting their digs in while it’s still culturally acceptable.