Saturday, October 12, 2013

Sandy Rios proves the hypocrisy and unrelenting ignorance of the religious right

Something interesting just happened at that ridiculous Values Voter Summit which I need to point out because it proves the point I and so many others have been making about the religious right.

Earlier this week,People For the American way joined with the Southern Poverty Law Center, Faithful America, GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza sent a letter to every public official who was scheduled to attend this summit asking them to cancel. That letter found its way in the hands of Sandy Rios of Concerned Women for America and she read part of it from the podium just now:



 It's fascinating to me that Rios read only a part of the letter and claimed that it proves that this is a "dangerous time to be a Christian conservative." However, here is the part of the letter she did not read and I doubt will address:

The FRC has amassed an extensive record of vilifying gays and lesbians with falsehoods – portraying them as sick, evil, incestuous, violent, perverted, and a danger to the nation.

Perhaps its most insidious claim is that gay men molest children at a far higher rate than heterosexual men – a claim refuted by all credible scientific authorities, including the American Psychological Association. Yet the FRC has continued to smear gays and lesbians by claiming that pedophilia, in the words of FRC President Tony Perkins, “is a homosexual problem.” Perkins also says the “It Gets Better” campaign, an initiative designed to give LGBT students hope for a better tomorrow, is “disgusting” and part of a “concerted effort” to “recruit” children into the gay “lifestyle.” One senior FRC official has even argued that homosexuality should be illegal.

The AFA’s Bryan Fischer, who serves as the group’s spokesman and director of issue analysis, frequently blames homosexuality for the Holocaust and Nazi Party: “Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews.” He also promotes the views of the American architect of the “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda. Demonizing the LGBT community has consequences. As FBI data demonstrate, it is one of the groups most likely to be victimized by violent hate crimes. Defaming them publicly day after day – as the FRC and the AFA do – only throws fuel on the fire.

So Rios is using the letter to make it seem that Christian conservatives are being "victimized," only after omitting the portion which calls attention to the simple fact that the organizations she is defending are guilty of demonizing, vilifying, and basically bearing false witness against lgbt community.

So in a way, Rios is right. It is a dangerous time to be a Christian conservative but not for the reason she wants us to think.

Seems to me that if being a Christian conservative commands you to show hate and bigotry against a group of people and then hiding this hate and bigotry by either the "sin of omission" (such as Rios just did) or behind a false image of "Christian beliefs," you have serious problems.

In fact, to paraphrase an old saying, you have 99 problems but the lgbt community and our allies aren't one of them.

Right-wing activist - Gay people should 'keep it private'

As mentioned before, taking place this weekend is that dreadfully repugnant "Values Voter" summit put on by the Family Research Council.

A key part of this monstrosity of an event is always the awful anti-gay comments. And this is evidenced by the following video of a speech which just took place by right-wing activist Star Parker:



Sorry, Star Parker (and by the way, you are so unaptly named), but neither me nor any of my lgbt brothers and sisters will follow different rules of behavior from folks like yourself. We will not keep our families, our relationships, and our very lives "private" simply because you have a hang up about sexual intercourse.

That's YOUR problem, not ours.

Hat tip to Right Wing Watch who has taken the awful task of live tweeting this event. I think the organization deserves some type of perpetual award for that one.

Also, let's keep up the twitter bombing:

 RT How They See Us: Unmasking the War on America