Gordon Coale Weblog Entry

Friday September 3 2004 09: 42 AM

delusion, fear, and hate

I didn't watch much of the Republican convention. My mental state is in a pretty precarious position already. Following the convention first hand would have sent me over the edge. The Republican party has become a diseased entity. It lives in an alternative universe where reality doesn't intrude.

The I[raq] of the Storm: Voices from the Convention Floor

But when you spoke to individual delegates, you entered a world of genuine emotion; you entered, in short, a belief system. Unlike George Bush, with a speech carefully constructed by writers in front of him, the delegates all spoke without texts, quite spontaneously, and with numerous feelings on display -- not the least of which was fear. Their words were sometimes a lot rawer than what you read in the papers or generally hear on TV, but what made them striking was how similar what they said was, not just in tone but in words used and points made (as you'll see). That, of course, is the mark of a belief system -- lines repeated as your own from some deeper, jointly held text of conviction. Theirs is a text in which there is, generally, a single "them." "They" hit us. We struck back. Iraq was "theirs." The choices, such as they are, are simple and obvious. They would sound familiar indeed to those who remember the Vietnam era, when Lyndon Johnson, for instance, claimed that if we didn't fight the communists in Vietnam, we'd be doing so on West coast beaches. Today, once again, it's just a question of our soil or theirs, and theirs -- Iraq (Iran, Syria, or North Korea) -- is clearly preferable.
In this belief system, the arguments of their opponents carry, essentially, no weight whatsoever. It doesn't matter if the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times now reports that the whole "Sunni triangle" has blinked off the American map of Iraq and is being recreated as a series of mini-Taliban-like fiefdoms. This is no evidence of failure; nor are the missing weapons of mass destruction; nor is the lack of a bona fide al-Qaeda tie with Saddam (even if the 9/11 Commission confirmed its absence); nor is the now-never-ending, unaccomplished war in Iraq. In the end, it's enough to say that Saddam himself was a weapon of mass destruction, as most of the delegates did indeed do.
[...]
You would, in a sense, expect no less of these delegates. Still, step inside their belief system for a minute and think about where the logic takes you, should there be another Bush round. The logic takes you wherever this administration wants to go, wherever "they" are found to be.

[more]

Feel the Hate
by Paul Krugman

But the vitriol also reflects the fact that many of the people at that convention, for all their flag-waving, hate America. They want a controlled, monolithic society; they fear and loathe our nation's freedom, diversity and complexity.
The convention opened with an invocation by Sheri Dew, a Mormon publisher and activist. Early rumors were that the invocation would be given by Jerry Falwell, who suggested just after 9/11 that the attack was God's punishment for the activities of the A.C.L.U. and People for the American Way, among others. But Ms. Dew is no more moderate: earlier this year she likened opposition to gay marriage to opposition to Hitler.
The party made sure to put social moderates like Rudy Giuliani in front of the cameras. But in private events, the story was different. For example, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas told Republicans that we are in a "culture war" and urged a reduction in the separation of church and state.
Mr. Bush, it's now clear, intends to run a campaign based on fear. And for me, at least, it's working: thinking about what these people will do if they solidify their grip on power makes me very, very afraid.

[more]

Replies: 1 comment.

September 15, 2004

Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Op-Ed Editorial Desk

Re: Gay McCarthyism - "Feel the (Heterophobic) Hate"

This may seem like water over the dam now that the Republican convention is old news, but IMO, the principles involved have a long shelf life, and are worth considering.

While Googling around the web recently, I stumbled across your Sept. 3 Op-Ed piece on the Republican convention, “Feel the Hate.” I’m not interested in getting into a discussion of what was said about Senator Kerry. But I would like to talk about why Sheri Dew should not have been included in the list of speakers you accused of hate speech. More importantly, I’d like to use this as a case study of the McCarthyesque tactics employed by the gay press.

Gay McCarthyism - “If you disagree with me, you are a gay-basher.”

Here’s the part of “Feel the Hate” that caught my attention. “The convention opened with an invocation by Sheri Dew, a Mormon publisher and activist... Ms. Dew is no more moderate: earlier this year she likened opposition to gay marriage to opposition to Hitler,” (referring to a speech given on February 28 at the Family Action Council International’s Interfaith Conference on Defending Marriage and the Family).

After taking time to read her remarks, I concluded that Dew has been unjustly bashed by the gay press, specifically the Human Rights Campaign, in a fashion that would make even the late Senator Joe McCarthy spin in his grave.

Dew used a 1941 quote from Saturday Evening Post journalist Dorothy Thompson (who the gay movement claims as one of their own): “Before this epic is over, every living human being will have chosen. Every living human being will have lined up with Hitler or against him. Every living human being either will have opposed this onslaught or supported it, for if he tries to make no choice that in itself will be a choice. If he takes no side, he is on Hitler’s side. If he does not act, that is an act—for Hitler.” Dew then rephrased Thompson’s words substituting “the family” for “Hitler”. The gay press, however, would have you believe she replaced “Hitler” with “gay marriage”, which if you had bothered to check your facts, you would have discovered she clearly did not do.

In her speech, in which she referred to gays only once, Dew used three current events as examples of threats to the family. First, Kobe Bryant’s widely publicized extramarital affairs as examples of heterosexual immorality. Second, a news article which mentioned adoption of children within gay marriage. And third, her experience as a White House delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. In relation to adoption of children by gay couples, her primary concern appeared to be whether children adopted by gays will have functional male and female role models, NOT the equating of gays with Hitler’s genocide. Basically, “In [her] speech about several threats to family life, she compared Americans who fail to defend the family with indifferent Germans who failed to oppose Hitler's rise to power.” (Robert Knight, WorldNetDaily.com)

The [gay] boy who cried wolf

Mr. Krugman, you have been seriously misled by the inaccurate, dishonest spin the HRC put on Ms. Dew’s remarks. Don’t you think it is hypocritical when the gay press drags someone through the sewer for simply exercising their first amendment rights to disagree with them in a public forum?

(BTW, isn’t it ironic that when Dew, in her invocation, asked for peace and “freedom from acrimony,” she was attacked and labeled as a hate monger?)

By utilizing unethical McCarthy smear tactics, the HRC and other gay organizations run the risk of falling into the same trap as the fabled boy who found that yelling “wolf” was a good way to get attention. Fair minded people will eventually weary of being jerked around by false alarms, and when a real wolf is out there attacking GLBTs, no one will be listening. Perhaps what the Bard said applies to the gay press as well: “The lady doth protest too much...”

--
Ted Evans, Jr.
Salt Lake City, Utah

LINKS:

Feel the Hate By PAUL KRUGMAN (NYT) Op-Ed EDITORIAL DESK September 3, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/03/opinion/03krugman.html

Invocation by Sheri Dew, at the 2004 Republican National Convention on Monday, August 30, 2004
http://news.findlaw.com/prnewswire/20040831/31aug2004134955.html

Sheri Dew’s speech “Defenders of the Faith” on February 28, 2004 at the Family Action Council International’s Interfaith Conference on Defending Marriage and the Family.
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-religion/1095244/posts

GAY LEADERS CALL ON PRESIDENT TO REJECT INFLAMMATORY SPEAKERS - Anti-gay speakers should not be featured at convention, say Jacques and Robinson
http://www.hrc.org/Template.cfm?Section=Employment_Non-Discrimination_Act&CONTENTID=22445&TEMPLATE=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm

If all else fails, silence them! September 1, 2004 By Robert Knight ©2004 WorldNetDaily.com
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40244

FYI, one of the gay adoptive parents referred to in Dew’s speech was blogged as being a Mormon.
http://www.lathefamily.org/warren3/equalitymap/archives/001050.shtml

The entry for Dorothy Thompson from Lesbian Britannica:
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:37zmbRuDvQoJ:www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/1769/nl2f.html+%22Dorothy+thompson%22+lesbian&hl=en

Posted by Edmund Evans @ 09/15/2004 07:09 PM PST

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