Bigotry in the big tent
Published May 31, 2003
The NY Times examines a Bush campaign conundrum: How to convince a key part of your base that you hate gays, while at the same time projecting an image of tolerance to everyone else?
- ...[T]he emergence of gays as a more vocal presence in Republican politics is angering some leaders of conservative groups. In recent weeks, those groups have been sending pointed messages to the White House warning that President Bush's re-election is in jeopardy if he continues to court what they call the "homosexual lobby."
White House officials dismiss the complaints, saying President Bush is simply trying to be inclusive and find common ground with gays when he can — a strategy that political analysts say has worked well for Mr. Bush on other issues.
"The president," said Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, "believes strongly that one of the roles of a leader is to bring people together around shared priorities."
But the current tension between gays and conservatives illustrates the risks of that strategy, suggesting that the two main tenets of Mr. Bush's brand of Republicanism — the "big tent" philosophy and the "family values" agenda — may be on a collision course, just in time for the 2004 election campaign.
Conservatives may be good at seizing power they didn't earn (see: 2000 presidential election), and bullying opponents into silence when they abuse that power (see: 2002 mid-term election), but there's one thing they've never been good at: Keeping themselves from becoming so drunk with power that they forget to hide the ugliness that is at the heart of so many of them (see: Newt Gingrich).
- When Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, commented on the [Texas sodomy] case, he angered gays of all political stripes by likening homosexuality to incest and bigamy. Gay Republicans, however, say the remark emboldened them, giving them new leverage on party leaders.
But leaders of conservative and Christian groups, angry at what they say is the president's tepid defense of Mr. Santorum, assert that they will use the court's decision to demand that Mr. Bush, who is on record as opposing gay marriage, take a more vocal stand.
"Candidate Bush said in the second debate that he felt marriage was a sacred covenant, limited to a man and a woman," said Ken Connor, president of the Family Research Council, an advocacy group in Washington. "That was not a huge issue in 2000. Mark it down. It will be a big, big issue in 2004."
Yay! In this corner, the electorate, which by and large is tolerant of gay people and doesn't particularly want its leaders to condemn them from a bully pulpit. In the other corner, the Christian Right, a very significant portion of W's base, which feels commanded by God to hate homosexuals (well, okay, they hate homosexuality--homos are okay once they cease to be homos) and demands that its leaders publicly take a similar stand.
While it's likely, given the standard position of Christian extremists on the issue, that George W. Bush and his close spiritual advisor Franklin Graham privately speak about homosexuals the same way that Graham's father and Richard Nixon spoke about Jews, Bush no doubt values the fag-sympathizer vote.
One of the entertaining aspects of the coming campaign will be W's dance between hatred and tolerance, as he tries to convince two different camps that he somehow possesses both.
- Bigotry in the big tent
- Published: May 31, 2003
- Type:
- Section: Politics
- Writer: Brian Flemming
- Brian Flemming's BC Writer page
- Brian Flemming's personal site
- Spread the Word
- Like this article?
- Email this
Save to del.icio.us
Comments on this articleComments
Al, you're probably wasting your time. Remember, Brian likes to demand evidence from others to substantiate their off-the-cuff statements, then refuses to acknowledge when offered on the grounds that it doesn't meet arbitrary criteria decided by Brian.
When the shoe is on the other foot, Brian either doesn't respond at all, or responds only to one very small part of what you've said, and manages to start asking new never-before-asked questions, suddenly crowing that nobody will answer his question and refusing to serve up his own evidence until they do. When they do, he ignores the answers.
Finally, on some occasions he'll offer up "evidence" that only he himself could ever possibly believe substantiates his original charge.
So in Brian's world, Republicans "hate" gays, Frankling Graham is a close spiritual adviser and close personal friend of George Bush, and they all sit around the crackling fire cackling about those awful Jews and Negroes while eating dolphins and Moslem babies.
Oops! No evidence for that last detail, I guess. My bad.
Al,
You're right. It's far more likely that when Bush and Graham get together and the subject of gays come up, the conversation goes like this:
Bush: "You know, Franklin, I really like the gay people. I sure wish I could say so."
Graham: "Me too, George. Me too. How about we make a joint public statement about tolerance, and call upon our followers to cease their hateful rhetoric about these great, tax-paying Americans?"
Bush: "That's a great idea! We could do it in the Rose Garden. Those people love flowers, you know."
Graham: "I want to say, 'It is time to end homophobia as we know it.'"
Bush: "Yeah, and I'll say--"
(phone rings; W picks up, listens)
Bush: "Oh." (hangs up) "That was Karl. He was listening in. He says no way."
Franklin: "Why not? Isn't it the right thing to do?"
Bush: "Yeah, well, you know. We need the votes. Too bad, really. I want people to know how much I like the gays and respect them as good Americans."
Yep. This is far more plausible than Graham and Bush quoting Leviticus to each other.
Phillip,
If I have mischaracterized the general feeling of the Christian Right toward gays, I'd welcome an alternate perspective. How do you think the Christian Right REALLY feels about gays?
Meanwhile, I guess I'll update the list of your claims I started here as follows:
1) Rick Santorum has no significant power in Republican politics.
2) The Christian Right, while a strong force in Republican politics, is not a strong force in American politics.
3) Bill Bennett could not plausibly be described as having ever presented himself as someone "who controls or directs the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character according to rule, principle, or law." But if he ever did, it was a misstatement.
4) The Bush Administration did not tell a single lie in the run-up to the war on Iraq.
5) Franklin Graham is not a close spiritual adviser to George W. Bush.
As always, let me know if I have not represented your views accurately.
Brian, you pretty much classify ANY criticism of homosexual behavior or any disagreement with the requests of homosexual political lobbyists as hatred and homophobia.
The Bible does pretty well say that homosexuality is sinful. So therefore, anyone who is a Bible believing Christian will probably thus be labeled "hateful" and "homophobic".
Your little play there in comment #3 pretty well makes the case for me. If the president isn't going on about how much he really, really likes gay people, and anxiously looking for more ways to prove it, then he must hate them in his heart like we know most Republicans really do.
There's no possible way for Bush to win with you. You will not have a good word for him about anything no matter what. Do you seriously think that he even SHOULD renounce Graham and Falwell for preaching the Bible?
There are surely some people (Republicans and Democrats alike) who have some hangups and hostility about gay folk. I see only very little even intent of any political activity directed against homosexuals. Is even Franklin Graham pushing to outlaw sodomy?
I haven't heard any such. I do know Falwell has taken some efforts to meet with advocates of homosexual groups on a friendly basis.
I can somewhat understand why people were pissy with Santorum, though what he said was relatively mild and within some realm of reasonable debate, even if I disagree with him. Bush, however, has said nothing whatsoever, made no accomodation that I know of to any anti-gay bigotry.
Oh yeah, I forgot one. Brian also likes to respond with "evidence" consisting of hypothetical scenarios that exist only in Brian's twisted imagination. Then he launches into the personal stuff while ignoring the subtance of what anybody has said. Thanks, Brian, I almost forgot that tactic of yours.
Al, I hate to say I told you so, but doesn't it seem that yet again, this is a complete waste of time?
An issue not fully realized here is that while most Americans don't wish to deny civil rights to gays and very few condone violence or abuse against gays, but most Americans are also deeply ambivalent toward homosexuality and do not want to see policies in polace that would appear to "promote" it. I'd say Bush about exactly represents the average American perspective.
Careful, Eric. Brian will start a list on you, too:
1. Actually believes George W. Bush is human!!!!
2. Everybody thinks exactly like George W. Bush does.
3. American gays are deeply ambivalent toward homosexuality.
Do I have that about right, Eric? :)
Eric,
I agree that Bush may represent the views of many Americans with regard to gays. ("Average" I don't know about, but certainly many.) But your comments point out the confusion of that point of view:
1) Civil rights. Of course, this would include the right to get married. Bush does not support this right. He does not support even a "separate but equal" style marriage right such as a "civil union."
2) "Promoting" homosexuality. No gay group I know of is asking for a special tax credit for gay people. Giving gays equal rights is "promoting" homosexuality in the same way that allowing mixed marriages "promotes" miscegenation.
I disagree with you that most Americans are "deeply" ambivalent about homosexuality. If push came to shove, I think most Americans would just shrug and allow gays the right to marry or civilly unionize--after all, they don't want their singers, choreographers and fashion designers to be all pissed off all the time. They might not like THINKING about homos, but if forced to, I think most Americans would agree that discriminating against someone just because of who that person fell in love with is wrong.
But there is one group in the U.S. that would be particularly pissed off about such a move toward fairness. Whether you term their passion "hate" or "disgust" or "condemnation" doesn't really matter--the point is, they're the one group in the U.S. who would actually fight about this issue when push comes to shove.
The Christian Right is a distinct minority, but they have a lot of sway with George W. Bush. That's why Bush didn't rebuke Santorum the way he rebuked Lott. He cannot acknowledge the humanity of gays without suffering a political blow.
That's what the NY Times article was about, and that's what my post was about. What's going to be interesting is what happens when Bush is forced into a corner. The Christian right clearly wants him to take a stand on the "homosexual agenda" instead of dodging the issue. The homos want him to do the same thing. And these are two groups that have a pretty good track record at not shutting the fuck up.
Al,
You wrote:
- The Bible does pretty well say that homosexuality is sinful.
Have you read Leviticus? Do you know what else that bizarre book says?
"Bible-believing Christians," virtually without exception, pick and choose what they believe to be God's laws when it comes to the Old Testament. They have to--God orders so much murder and torture that every Christian would be in jail right now if they all truly followed the Bible.
Belief that gays deserve special moral condemnation is a choice, pure and simple, the same as a belief that blacks or Jews or Christians deserve special moral condemnation. Call it prejudice, hatred, whatever. It is hardly benign, and it hardly follows automatically from being a "Bible-believing" Christian.
Most Christians I know do not hold this view. I live in L.A., so I'm not claiming these Christians represent the mainstream. But they are proof that it is possible to believe in the message of Jesus Christ without believing that gays are damned. Tolerance and Christianity are not mutually exclusive, despite what the Christian Right may want Christians to believe.
Phillip,
You wrote:
- [Brian] launches into the personal stuff while ignoring the substance of what anybody has said.
The "substance" of your comments in this thread consists entirely of a string of unsupported personal attacks on me. It is impossible for me to "respond" in any substantive way to vague attacks on the order of "Brian likes to do this, Brian likes to do that." I'd ask you to look over your comments. If the shoe were on the other foot, how would you possibly respond?
On the other hand, I have offered a list of what I truly believe to be your factual claims. You have yet to respond to this list in a specific way.
The list (updated to remove an old item):
1) The Christian Right, while a strong force in Republican politics, is not a strong force in American politics.
2) Bill Bennett could not plausibly be described as having ever presented himself as someone "who controls or directs the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character according to rule, principle, or law." But if he ever did, it was a misstatement.
3) The Bush Administration did not tell a single lie in the run-up to the war on Iraq.
4) Franklin Graham is not a close spiritual adviser to George W. Bush.
I have composed this list based directly on your comments here on Blogcritics. There is nothing "personal" about it.
Is it accurate? Yes? No? Maybe? Some? None? All?
As always, if I have made incorrect assumptions, I am open to being corrected.
I don't have any great disagreement with you here Brian, but degrees can matter. I think a lot of people who don't want to see discrimination in housing or employment against gays are not comfortable with the societal sanction of marriage - which is highly symbolic as well as legally important - although they would probably go for similar benefits, etc. This is where the ambivalence comes in. Living in LA, I fear you get a skewed view of "the average American."
Much more needs to be done to fight discrimination.
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/5772)
Brian, you're not being at all fair to the Republicans here. YOU are the one saying that these various Republican constituent groups "hate" homosexuals. That's not what most even of those groups actually say or mean, let alone average Republicans.
Far more egregious is your TOTALLY UNFOUNDED attack on President Bush: "it's likely, given the standard position of Christian extremists on the issue, that George W. Bush and his close spiritual advisor Franklin Graham privately speak about homosexuals the same way that Graham's father and Richard Nixon spoke about Jews" You just reached out and grabbed that, made it up.
Take it back and apologize. You know better. He has done absolutely nothing whatsoever to deserve that attack.