NYT Op/Ed: “Justice Sunday” is a dangerous fraud with an ANTI-GAY agenda

[Nothing Without Hope]

We knew this, of course, but it’s good that a prominent NYT editorial documents and emphasizes it. It’s amazing how the fear of homosexuality is so easily whipped up by these evil people into a blind, violent frenzy. We have to find some way of reaching people with the truth about homosexuality and calm these deep-seated fears —a carefully planned and worded reframing campaign of some kind? --or this will just keep happening. It's been all too useful as a tool for the RW enablers of the Bush cartel and its hangers-on like Frist.

In the meantime, our fight is cut out for us against these lying hypocrites who would tear down the constitution and demonize human beings for their political gain and greed. Frist is doing this because he wants to be president. He is a fraud, a liar, a hypocrite, and the very opposite of a patriot. It is the most bitter irony that he invokes the name of Jesus, who taught love and tolerance, in his hatemongering schemes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/opinion/24rich.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th
OP-ED COLUMNIST

A High-Tech Lynching in Prime Time

By FRANK RICH, Published: April 24, 2005

(snip)

The "Justice Sunday" mob is also lying when it claims to despise activist judges as a matter of principle. Only weeks ago it was desperately seeking activist judges who might intervene in the Terri Schiavo case as boldly as Scalia & Co. had in Bush v. Gore. The real "Justice Sunday" agenda lies elsewhere. As Bill Maher summed it up for Jay Leno on the "Tonight" show last week: " 'Activist judges' is a code word for gay." The judges being verbally tarred and feathered are those who have decriminalized gay sex (in a Supreme Court decision written by Justice Kennedy) as they once did abortion and who countenance marriage rights for same-sex couples. This is the animus that dares not speak its name tonight. b]To paraphrase the "Justice Sunday" flier, now it's the anti-filibuster campaign that is being abused to protect bias, this time against gay people.

(snip)

Tonight's megachurch setting and pseudoreligious accouterments notwithstanding, the actual organizer of "Justice Sunday" isn't a clergyman at all but a former state legislator and candidate for insurance commissioner in Louisiana, Tony Perkins. He now runs the Family Research Council, a Washington propaganda machine devoted to debunking "myths" like "People are born gay" and "Homosexuals are no more likely to molest children than heterosexuals are." It will give you an idea of the level of Mr. Perkins's hysteria that, as reported by The American Prospect, he told a gathering in Washington this month that the judiciary poses "a greater threat to representative government" than "terrorist groups." And we all know the punishment for terrorists. Accordingly, Newsweek reports that both Justices Kennedy and Clarence Thomas have "asked Congress for money to add 11 police officers" to the Supreme Court, "including one new officer just to assess threats against the justices." The Judicial Conference of the United States, the policy-making body for the federal judiciary, has requested $12 million for home-security systems for another 800 judges.

(snip)

It was three months earlier, on the Dec. 5, 2004, edition of ABC News's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," that Dr. Frist enlisted in the Perkins-Dobson cavalry. That week Bush administration abstinence-only sex education programs had been caught spreading bogus information, including the canard that tears and sweat can transmit H.I.V. and AIDS - a fiction that does nothing to further public health but is very effective at provoking the demonization of gay men and any other high-risk group for the disease. Asked if he believed this junk science was true, the Princeton-and-Harvard-educated Dr. Frist said, "I don't know." After Mr. Stephanopoulos pressed him three more times, this fine doctor theorized that it "would be very hard" for tears and sweat to spread AIDS (still a sleazy answer, since there have been no such cases).

Senator Frist had hoped to deflect criticism of his cameo on "Justice Sunday" by confining his appearance to video. Though he belittled the disease-prevention value of condoms in that same "This Week" interview, he apparently now believes that videotape is just the prophylactic to shield him from the charge that he is breaching the wall separating church and state. His other defense: John Kerry spoke at churches during the presidential campaign. Well, every politician speaks at churches. Not every political leader speaks at nationally televised political rallies that invoke God to declare war on courts of law.

(snip)

[Maraya1969]

1. The "people of faith" thing is one of their tactics used to promote

their agenda. I am a person of faith. I am not a fundamentalist Christian. I'm not even a Christian in their definition of the term. But they dis-allow me, (in their own minds) as a "person of faith" because I am not in line with them. Indeed they disallow most Americans, IMO because most Americans have some sort of faith based belief system.

I personally still think they are going to implode. A deceitful group such as this may have been able to gain power in WW ll under Hitler but he did not have to deal with a country that was so educated and so linked to other views. One of the ways he got the SS to mass murder people was to remove them from all other influences and brain wash them. We won't tolerate such a thing on a mass level as is evidenced in all the writings that are so critical of these nitwits and the number of people who already know what they are truly about.

[ima_sinnic]

2. yes, and THANK GOODNESS for the internet!

history would be very different now if there had been a World Wide Web in the 1930s, allowing people to find out things for themselves, to communicate with each other, and to hear news from all over the world.

[creeksneakers2]

3. Framing an issue is far more important than framing words

When these people rant about homosexuals, they should be told to mind their own business. That puts them on the defensive.

[Nothing Without Hope]

4. I think they are AFRAID of homosexuals for some reason

and that this is what has been so easy for the neocons to tap into. We need to learn what is the basis of this fear and address it, in my opinion. If they think homosexuals are going to damage them or their family, they won't be content to mind their own business. They are convinced that their god hates gays too, and they use that to excuse acting on their pre-existing fears.

[creeksneakers2]

5. They hate homosexuals

because they aren't allowed to hate blacks or Jews anymore. Its true they feel threatened. Trying to change them only reinforces their belief that they are being threatened. That is how they have been getting out of the "mind your own business" trap so far.

[Joebert]

6. I just want to know where they get the free time to protest homosexuals

I mean, protesters are everywhere, drummed up in minutes sometimes.

Who employs these people?

[Nothing Without Hope]

7. I think the hate comes from an underlying fear as well as the desire to

feel that they are in their god's favored group while there are "others" outside it. The fear part may be possible to address. For example, Frist's cronies are busy pushing lies like he ones pointed out in the article.

[ngGale]

12. They still hate everybody, just keeping it...

under wraps until they pass more legislation. Gay bashing is easy for them to use, but civil rights works for all people. After the job is a done deal, they will turn on everyone.

[Karenina]

9. Check out this analysis:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3531493#3531652

I'd be interested in your reaction.

[creeksneakers2]

10. Mostly I laughed

No doubt there are those kinds of fears out there. I watch and listen to wingers for a hobby. They hate almost everybody, and have irrational fears of almost everything. (Libs trying to take away Christmas, etc.)

[Karenina]

14. Chuckle, chortle, guffaw...

:rofl:

[Karenina]

15. Kick!

til I figure out where to file this where I can find it before it drops. Too much truth contained therein to be "popular" fer shure!!! :evilgrin:

[Zhade]

8. That's pretty bold on the part of the NYT.

Shame their 'journalists' don't have the courage to go where some of their editorialists will.

[OneBlueSky]

11. homophobia (or, more accurately, homo-hatred) is very difficult . . .

to effectively counter, since its source is the fear and hatred these people have of the homosexual parts of themselves . . .

human sexuality is very complex, and not an either/or thing . . . we all exist on a continuum of hetero/homo -- and all straights, no matter how hetero, have some level of homosexuality in their psychosexual makeup . . .

and they all know it . . . and it terrifies them . . .

and rather than admit that it's just a normal part of human sexuality that everyone experiences, they engender a near panic level of fear and self-loathing that they then project onto others . . . in the form of "God hates fags" and related kinds of stuff . . .

homo-hatred comes from a form of self-hatred, and that's something that's extremely difficult to change . . . particularly when those experiencing it have no interest in changing . . .

[Nothing Without Hope]

13. Yes, I agree that part of the fear/hate is about deep psychological

matters that need more analysis and digging than there is time for now. I too have a suspicion that, as with bonobos (also known, incorrectly, as "pygmy chimpanzees"), the "natural" state of human desire is less extremely polarized than it is perceived to be by most people in our society, being more a continuum than two opposite and totally exclusive camps and a no-man's land (literally) in between. (I think most US people don't really "get" what bisexuality is - it's gays vs straights for them.)

But SOME of the fear/hate is due to the LIES that have been promoted by the RW neocon enablers and passed mindlessly on. THESE can be countered NOW. Lies about gays being pedophiles, homosexuality being a "lifestyle choice," gays being in some kind of conspiracy to take over something or other, homosexuality itself being contagious either in a biological sense or by active recruitment, all gays having HIV and passing it to everybody else, etc. Frightened people share scary rumors and so they keep spreading, getting magnified in the process. THAT can and should be addressed.

One goal of the gay demonization schemes of the neocons and their cronies is to shape the public perception of gays into seeing them as inhuman, so alien that they can be objectified into a common, faceless enemy. THIS can be addressed. Learning to see gays as just people - neighbors, friends, coworkers - would fight that unreasoning fear.

[BeFree]

16. The crux is

The radical right-wingers believe the "....judiciary poses "a greater threat to representative government" than "terrorist groups.""

Because in reality the Law and the Constitution are the only thing keeping them from complete control. It must have really busted their chops when the Supremes told their leader that Gitmo could not continue as planned.

Being that their carefully laid plans for complete and utter control now are running into the bastion of the Law and the Constitution and a circumvent of the Law is not possible, they are on a path of changing the people who interpret Laws and the Constitution: Judges.

The use of abortion, gays and whatever else they can find to divide the people, are nothing but tools to changing how the Constitution and the Laws are personally realized on the streets.