August 4, 2012

Chick-fil-A continued

A nice list of thoughtful comments on the Chicken mess, here from Fred.  As for me, I have a few more thoughts.  I read several people on FB say that this was about defending Biblical marriage.  As many have pointed out, that isn't one thing.  But even if it were, Christian conservatives have a very inconsistent past on this--and I bet they don't even remember.

When gays people simply wanted the right to be gay, conservative Christians opposed that.  When they wanted the right to not be charged with a crime for having gay sex, conservative Christians opposed that.  When they wanted the simple right to not be fired for being gay, conservative Christians opposed that.

Conservative Christians have tried to make gay people not gay.  They have funded (though badly) organizations dedicated to transforming gays into straights.  And when that didn't work, they simply tried to push gay people back into the closet.

You don't get to say that it is just about gay marriage.  It was never about marriage.  It was about being gay.  Conservative Christians simply don't want gay people to exist.

But they do.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Streak- good points as usual. It's also about selective exclusion with little or no risk. I doubt anyone visiting a CFA on Wednesday was concerned about getting fired, physically attacked, or even ridiculed, particularly here in the bible belt. On the other hand, would anyone be surprised to learn that a gay person was attacked if they showed up at a CFA to kiss their partner today? Picking on someone weaker than you are whether they're physically, politically, economically, or numerically weaker is anti-Jesus even if it's no longer anti-Christian.
Bootleg Blogger

Monk-in-Training said...

Good point, Bootleg.

It is easy to party with your friends, eating a sandwich, hold some signs, approving smiles all around.

Much tougher to get fired, beat up, house spray painted, band words cut into your flesh, strangled, etc (all things that have happened to gay people in Oklahoma)

Reminds me of the rich man walking past Lazarus in the gate. His sin was that he had no mercy, could not lower himself to see the world from the view of a person he considered beneath his concern.

That didn't end well. Lord, in Your mercy...

Monk-in-Training said...

that was meant to say 'bad words' not band words!

Liz said...

Chris Clarke has a piece about the same issue. I particularly like this observation:

If there’s one thing WE can do, it’s disagree with each other. Somehow we survive the disagreements. We mostly don’t feel personally threatened if someone else in our orbit doesn’t share our beliefs.

As a result, we mostly can’t really bring ourselves to believe that you DO feel that threatened by disagreement. We think of it as silly hyperbole when you say the presence of other religions constitutes a War On Your Religion, or that two other people loving each other in a way you don’t care for is a War On Your Family. It’s hard for a lot of us to get it through our heads that you actually mean that.

The DNA Diva said...

This off topic, but thought you would be interested in this story at the Daily Beast (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/11/christian-right-historian-david-barton-in-freefall-over-jefferson-lies.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_morning&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_morning&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet ) about the fall of David Barton in conservative Christan circles. Apparently some conservative scholars of history have been fact-checking his work and they are shocked, SHOCKED! I say, to discover his work is riddled with errors.

Streak said...

Liz, good quote. Reminds me of the other, very thoughtful post that said, in essence, that for gay people, "agreeing to disagree" leaves us without rights, while costing conservatives nothing. I have a friend who seems to believe that if he is judging gay people, they are also judging him--but doesn't realize that he wants them to lose rights, while they just want him to leave them alone.

DNA Diva, I did see that last week. Love to see Barton getting criticism even from the right. If the world were a fair place, he would be considered a joke by all, instead of just by thinking people.

Liz said...

Good point. One of the things that seems to come bundled up with privilege generally is the ability to be seen as the more “reasonable” party, because agreeing to disagree or compromising on issues of civil rights rarely costs the more powerful party anything. It adds a whole new layer of insult. Not that I’m the first to make this observation – every activist group has a slew of “why are you so angry?” and “why can’t we discuss this rationally?” stories.