Do you dance with the devil by the pale moonlight?
by Ed White
Sometimes I think I need to get a grip. I'm obsessed with the radical religious right in this country. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a life-and-death struggle against them. The far right, fuming about the Supreme Court's nullification of sodomy laws and the specter of gay marriages in Massachusetts, has promised an all-out assault to make their case against it next year. It's become the number one fundraising tool for groups like the Family Research Council.
Am I crazy? They'll be laughed off the national stage, won't they? After all, we've become such a tolerant society lately, the hype about Ellen Degeneres' prime-time coming out only a few years ago now seems quaint. In an age of Queer Eye and metrosexuality, who's going to pay any attention to such extremists?
Since the last Bush administration, three states have offered legal protections for gay unions, with Massachusetts soon to follow. More than 50 cities and counties across the United States have added such protections through domestic partner registries. Some 198 Fortune 500 companies (including 34 of the top 50) now offer domestic partner benefits, while 207 newspapers across the country, in some of the top markets, now accept same-sex wedding or union announcements. Defense of Marriage Acts (DOMAs) notwithstanding, churches, families and communities are dignifying and celebrating gay unions all over the country even as we speak.
I'd like to think these gay-bashing Salemites will fail so badly they'll lose credibility once and for all. They basically want to write gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered (GLBT) Americans out of the Constitution—read the fine print.
Most people living in the real world will recoil from that, won't they? But you know, even if that rejection happens, the damage they could do next year to individual GLBT lives, and often enough these days to the lives of the children of GLBT folk, is very real.
This is not being called a Culture War for nothing, and these Christian Soldiers have declared offensive fronts against much more than gay rights. Even locally we are seeing it. The County Commission has already voted to post the 10 Commandments; yet even though that project is in legal limbo, along comes a God Resolution. Defeated by a whisker, it still may be resurrected next year.
But you know what? Ever heard of the Rev. Fred Phelps? Phelps has a website, www.godhatesfags.com, and one of the first things you see on his webpage is the quote, "SODOMY IS AN ABOMINABLE SIN, WORTHY OF DEATH. " It's no coincidence this uber-bigot picked Greene County, Tenn., when he recently tried to place his statue there, a statue of the late beating victim Matthew Shepherd celebrating his entry to hell for being a sodomite.
Phelps picked Greene County because it displays the 10 Commandments in its courthouse and made national news recently by passing, and then passing along the God Resolution to Knox and other East Tennessee counties.
As ridiculous as Phelps may seem, he is not the only one out there by a long shot. Not all of that ilk are content with non-violent action, either, as the case of Eric Rudolph, caught in neighboring North Carolina, demonstrates. Besides abortion clinics, Rudolph is also charged with bombing a gay nightclub in a murderous rampage.
So am I crazy to fear next year? Good "average" folk don't subscribe to such tactics, even if they do dislike the existence of gays and gay rights. Our own Sen. Frist and Rep. Duncan, for instance, may support the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) and, in Duncan's case, say such things as "there's too much homosexuality these days," but they would never sanction violence, would they?
Well, the devil, of course, is in the details. FMA supporters can't win their case simply repeating their mantra, "Marriage is between a man and a woman only." Check out the web pages for the hardcore supporters of FMA, and you'll get the full scope of their arguments. Some of it's very subtle and occasionally sounds reasonable, disclaiming violence; all of them, personally, are pretty vile.
But you quickly see that they talk less against gay marriage and more against gays themselves for the evils they imagine gays do. They incite people with repackaged myths about promiscuity, recruiting, mental illness, pedophilia, untrustworthiness and disease. They'd probably say they only incite donations to defend marriage, but how responsible are they if someone takes it the wrong way?
If they truly believe their own charges against us, stopping gay marriage would only be a start for solving the gay problem. Re-educating gays, through ministries or otherwise, is already on their agenda. Every force evolves a form, and Phelps is only one of many who would love to draw the blueprints.
Worst of all, many of these Salemites are so mainstreamed these days, they're everywhere: experts for TV discussions on gay marriage, negotiating the FMA position with Sen. Frist and too many other politicians. Even our own Volunteer TV (Channel 8) newscasts feature segments from James Dobson, a man with a long, ugly history of anti-gay bigotry in Colorado and beyond. Too many have pandered to these types for the past 20 years, making deals with the devil that we will all have to pay back one day.
Ed White serves on the Knoxville Regional Board for the National Conference for Community and Justice.
December 18, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 51
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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