Blowing off ‘values voters’

September 18, 2007

In case there was any doubt that the religious right’s power is on the wane, even in Republican circles, the evidence was quite clear last night in South Florida. Several evangelical groups co-hosted what they labeled the “Values Voter Debate,” featuring theocratic right-wing luminaries like Phyllis Schlafly, Roy Moore, Paul Weyrich, Don Wildmon, Rick Scarborough, and Janet Folger. The event was “moderated” by Joseph Farah, the unhinged activist who founded WorldNetDaily.

Shortly after the event was announced, the debate organizers said seven of the nine GOP candidates would participate. Shortly thereafter, sponsors lowered expectations, saying only that a “majority” would participate. By the time candidates took the stage last night, the entire Republican top-tier — Rudolph Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, and John McCain — was a no-show.

Little more than asterisks in the public opinion polls, the lesser-known candidates for president tried Monday to appeal to the most conservative elements of the Republican Party in an attempt to break into top-tier status.

Hot-button social issues, especially related to abortion and homosexuality, were the most frequent questions posed to seven candidates for their party’s presidential nomination at the Values Voter debate at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.

To get to seven, organizers had to include Alan Keyes and John Cox.

Rudy Giuliani was surprisingly bold in snubbing the religious right organizers. His campaign cited scheduling difficulties when declining to attend the debate in South Florida, but according to his campaign schedule, he was four miles away, attending an event in Fort Lauderdale at the same time as the event. The religious right hasn’t been thrilled with Giuliani anyway, but this looks like an instance in which the former mayor was trying to offend them.

That said, given that the event was created by extremists for extremists, the “Values Voter” debate included a few gems.

* Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said we’re in the midst of a “theological war. It’s not politically correct to say that. It’s just the truth.”

* “If a judicial candidate can look at a sonogram of an unborn child and not see a valuable human life, I will not appoint that judicial candidate to the federal bench,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.).

* Alan Keyes linked the fight against terrorism to abortion. He said the fight against killing is no different than the “fight against the killing of innocents in the womb. The killing is the same. The principle is the same.”

* Several of the candidates told the audience when they accepted Jesus Christ as their personal saviors.

Religious right leader Janet Folger was unrestrained in threatening those who neglected to participate in the debate. To those who “had something more important to do than talk to those of us who represent God’s principles,” Folger had a prediction: “Those who snubbed us, they will not win…. They will regret the decision.”

Maybe, maybe not. To be sure, religious-right activists are a major part of the Republican Party base, but we’ve apparently reached a point at which credible candidates don’t want to be seen with nutty figures like Schlafly, Moore, Weyrich, and Wildmon. I can’t say I blame them.

As for the audience, debate organizers said they had a waiting list with people anxious to attend the event, but they were probably bearing false witness — about a third of the 2,700 seats at the Broward Center for Performing Arts were empty.

Don’t go away mad, religious right; just go away.

And stay away. From the voting polls, that is.
No one linked to reality is worthy of your vote, anyway.

  • The candidates want these votes hence the insessant pandering and hand-wringing but don’t want to be too close beucase it might not play well in the general election to the moderates that they know they need. Sure “values voters” know this but they haven’t seem to have done much about it other than talk a good game becuase they are smart enough to know that the candidates they loves best may get the nomination but would be less likely to get elected. Those candidates whose “values voters” credential are tarnished or who know those voters won’t support them, should ditch the rhetoric because it ain’t helping. But instead they are trying to have their cake and eat it too, a situation that isn’t working out well.

  • I love the smell of wingnut wheels coming off in the morning.

    Maybe they should form a new party altogether if the Republican party doesn’t care about values anymore. I’ll chip in on that!

  • If Alan Keyes says killing a born person is as evil as abortion, then have we been missing his plaintive wails to end the killing in Iraq or Darfur?

    I agree with Mike Huckabee when he says “we’re in the midst of a theological war.” He should know, he and his fellow Republicans started it.

    And since when did this society get so narcissistic that we have “personal saviors?” And I thought personal trainers were bad.

  • “Those who snubbed us, they will not win…. They will regret the decision.”
    My goodness…now these individuals have catapulted themselves into the realm of prophets…

    “Alan Keyes linked the fight against terrorism to abortion. He said the fight against killing is no different than the ‘fight against the killing of innocents in the womb. The killing is the same. The principle is the same.’ ”

    …Excellent answer sir, now what’s your stance on the Death Penalty… {chirp}, {swallow}, “I… um…gee… well….”

    “When we talk about values, I think of rationality in solving problems. That’s something I value. Fairness, kindness, generosity, tolerance. When they talk about values, they’re talking about things like going to church, voting for Bush, being loyal to Jesus, praying. These are not values.”
    -Bill Maher

  • “..,.those of us who represent God’s principles”

    You got his go ahead to call yourselves that, huh?
    Color me impressed!

    Has humility ceased to be a virtue in some Christian circles??? I didn’t get the memo.

  • The Republicans are awfully busy rejecting people: first GW Bush, then Black Americans, and now, the core of the current Republican base, the “values voters”. Seems to me only the wealthy are left… And powerful as they are, they hardly represent a large voting block. Pubs are gonna’ need all the votes they can get.

  • … about a third of the 2,700 seats at the Broward Center for Performing Arts were empty.

    Presumably God will also smite down those who “had something more important to do than listen to those of us who represent God’s principles”?

  • What values are these folks defending? Based on their leaders actions, it doesn’t seem like much especially with values like:
    1) Wide stance foot tapping
    2) Diaper Wearing
    3) Kiddie Diddling
    4) Self Loathing
    5) Do as I say, not as I do
    6) Defrauding their flock and or government
    7) Fiscal Incompetence
    8) Demand others kill in the name of (but not them as they want to keep their souls pure for Jeebus.)
    9) Ignorance of pretty much anything including the bible.

    Hopefully this will be the start of 50 years of oblivion (never can fully stop’em–the power of human stupidity can be overwhelming–but contain their lunacy for at least a couple of generations.)

  • They have a odd idea of “values”. They think Jesus was a lawyer and politician and that it’s more important to have law schools than medical schools. They are already pointing the finger at their top tier candidates and display self righteous condemnation toward those who disagree with them. Typical republican hypocrisy too busy saving everyone else to see themselves. I live in the heart of the bible belt and have always wished they would just go away. They are so judgmental that seeing them in civil service is a nightmare because I know what they base their decisions on and it’s not the constitution.

  • Ron Paul, a Texas congressman who’s been involved with the Libertarian Party, occasionally differed with the other candidates. He said the most important constitutional principle is restraining the government.

    When others said, for example, they’d like to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage, Paul said he didn’t want to clutter the document. He said marriage isn’t a state function. It should be left to churches and shouldn’t require a government license.

    As he had said at other presidential debates and appearances, Paul said Islamic radicals aren’t anti-American by accident. “They come here and kill us because we occupy their lands,” he said.

    The United States went to war in Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction he said didn’t exist and to enforce a United Nations resolution, which he said was “criminal.”

    He also said restricting civil liberties in the war on terrorism could end up being used against Christians.

    So, the top-tier NeoCon candidates didn’t attend because they didn’t want to appear with “nutty figures,” huh? Somehow –today– they are rational in some sense because of that? Oh, I thought it’s because they are getting blown away at the debates by the common sense of non-NeoCon Ron Paul.

    But, hey, anything to bolster the “top-tier” NeoCons, eh CB? They need all the help they can get.

    Keep placing your faith in the antiquated Corporate Military Industrial Media-blessed landline telephone polls. Keep that self-serving, self-fulfilling prophecy going. It’s gotten us to the great place in American History that we find ourselves in today.

  • Shorter Talevan: Waaah! Pay attention to meeee!

    Eventually they’ll figure out the GOP used them like an adult-sized diaper. That’s when we’ll need to start worring about terrorism in the US.

  • The Economist had a great column a few years back on how the religious right had become a paradox of the communist USSR. It was a good read.

    “Don’t go away mad, religious right; just go away.” Amen! And take your Christian Embassy and Regent University with you! The US has enough incompetence without these nuts to add exponentially to it.

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  • Jeez, I am so behind the curve today…

    Let’s start with the fact that I think the majority of the country is getting fed up with the message that if you aren’t the “right” kind of Christian, and maybe aren’t even a Christian at all, you could not possibly have any values, morals or principles. What most people know is that you don’t need religion to be able to make a distinction between what is right and what is wrong, and you don’t need the fear of your god-of-choice or of eternal damnation to guide you in living a moral life. We all know, and have many examples that demonstrate, that a fairly convincing argument can be made that many who wield their religion like a 2 x 4 are far more concerned with the values of others than in practicing what they preach. If hypocrisy is a value of the religious right, they should take heart that they are doing a remarkably good job of adhering to it.

    If sitting in judgment is another of those values, they are also in the forefront; perhaps the Bibles they read don’t have that “Judge not, lest ye be judged” phrase, which I always interpreted as “mind your own business,” but, then, I didn’t get much formal religious education, so I could be way off-base on that one.

    Religion is personal. What I think or believe, whether I do or do not go to church – that’s my business, between me and God. What matters to me – and should matter to those who come into my orbit – is what kind of life I live. Do I live the values I believe in?

    I don’t need a politician standing up and waxing religious as a litmus test for whether he or she is worthy of my vote; it’s just not my business.

    Time for the politicians to stop being hostages to religious judgment and tell these self-appointed arbiters to back off.

  • In this corner, we have the sound-track from the Values Voters debate in South Florida.

    And in this corner, we have the sound-track of an extremely-large herd of lemmings as they flop wildly over a cliff and into the sea.

    Darn it all, they sound exactly the same to me. Where’s Monty Python when you need them?

  • And as the juicy fees and kickbacks start drying up from the ever-dwindling audience, our intrepid band of otherwise-unemployables might have to start doubling up at the Motel 6 for these little junkets or even (gasp) start looking for a real job.

    Let us pause for a moment to savor the inexpressibly delicious irony……..

  • JKap, I understand your frustration and even your point about tele-polls, but there are two kinds of polls Paul has also trailed in that are important and not subject to tele-poll biases.

    First is money. While Paul’s fundraising certainly has improved, he remains well behind Giuliani and Romney (given that Mitt’s debt is largely loans from himself) and even McCain (if you count general election money). Money may not be a fair indicator of breadth of support, but it is critical to be a viable candidate.

    Second is the Texas Straw Poll. Only Texas Republican Party activists and officials could vote. Paul is the only candidate from Texas; they know him best and have elected him to office. He came in third in his home state. That is a real problem – particularly when your state has as many delegates as Texas. The only real message from this is that Paul has no “base,” no “safe” support, except perhaps Libertarians who in the past have made up about 1-2% of the Presidential vote.

    If all of Paul’s supporters were as passionate about him as you are, he might be doing better, but for now he is simply not a first-tier contender.

  • So according to Ron Paul, the government has no business in marriage, which should be left to churches. Does that mean that atheists should now join homosexuals as people who should not be able to get married?

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  • N.Wells

    Also, if people could get married only in churches, then the state would have no right or interest in making inheritance laws or laws about divorce or children or anything to do with marriage.

  • You forgot the part where all but one supported:
    Ceasing Immigration
    Banning muslims
    Intervening in Iran
    Banning hate-crimes
    Allow people to harass people who aren’t them. (wtf?)
    Banning the judicial branch from ruling on religious actions of the government (wtf does that mean, anyhow?)
    Allow the government to build crosses
    Banning gay marriage
    Banning abortions
    Banning childless marriage (wha?)

    …Yeah, these guys are crazy. Like, look, if the judicial can’t rule on religious rights, then how are they going to stop or start building crosses, if the court can’t rule on it?

  • People, people, calm yourselves. Your disgust with religious conservatives is largely unfounded. I have been close to the inner circle of the “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy,” and most of these people are good, gentle, rational people, and in fact, you presently have more in common with them than you seem able to consciously admit. Some of you contend religious principles should not be a factor in governance. Try that theory with a thought experiment. What if, as of tomorrow, no form of killing would be against the law. No capital punishment. Unlimited abortion. Unlimited euthanasia, voluntary, involuntary, or whatever. Don’t like someone? Take ‘em out. No one will stop you using the mechanism of the law. What would happen? Well, I’m no prophet, but I think people would form up into mutually protective gangs, where each member of the group would be expected to assume some of the risk for each other member in the group. Promises would be made, oaths taken. They would say among themselves “Others may plunge into havoc, but we will take care of each other.” Would their internal rules of behavior be based entirely on securing their own survival? Perhaps for some. But these would soon be exposed as frauds in situations that required sacrifice. They would then lose the protection of the group. No, oddly, survival would at least partly depend on a willingness to not survive. This is odd, because if material life is all there is, there is no basis in rationality for a willingness to die in the service of others. Identifying a value that is higher than one’s own life is the very definition of religious thought. It is the essential idea behind the notion of the sacred. In the scenario presented those social groups that abstract the value of a human life to a common good (i.e., make it sacred) would be more likely to survive. Those where naked individualism was the only rule would disintegrate. The “sacred” societies would thus survive the period of lawless transition and come to dominate. Once dominant, they would impose laws reflecting the values that enabled their survival “in the wild.” Civilization reborn in the matrix of the sacred. A beautiful thing, isn’t it? Without the sacred, Nietzsche is right: right or wrong are nothing more than expressions of power. But if he is right, what is it that prevents a slide down the slippery slope into individualist anarchy? Something surely does seem to work against that, does it not? The excesses of the past illustrate that anti-sacred societies killed far more individuals than any other group. And yet they disintegrated. They defied a universal law of human existence and were therefore naturally self-extinguishing.

    By contrast, the central idea of many in the so-called religious right is simply to survive the present descent into anarchy and wait out the next cycle of ant-sacred disintegration. In large measure, we wish merely to be left alone. Let us preach in our churches without the IRS threatening political censorship. Let us marry heterosexual couples among ourselves without fear that our pastors will lose the free choice of whom they will and will not grant the sanction of a religious marriage. Let us teach our children the highly rational “values” of gentleness, kindness, love, self-discipline, truthfulness, courage, and the willingness to sacrifice in a good cause. Let us give honor to the Supreme Judiciary according to the dictates of our conscience. Grant us these things, and see what the country looks like in fifty years or so.

  • To those who “had something more important to do than talk to those of us who represent God’s principles,” Folger had a prediction: “Those who snubbed us, they will not win…. They will regret the decision.”

    So, Giuliani, Romney, McCain, or Thompson won’t win. There’s a prophecy I can live with.

  • What the heck is carpet bagger? Never heard of this site at all…. It doesn’t appear this is a valuable source of information…. I see little debate and a lot of silly posts to undermine the value of the debate. I have always listened to the far left and tried to repect such views and I expect the same when I desire to protect the unborn…. Both party members have a bad habit of concluding we all support the GOP or Hllary or what ever your flavor is… Thuth be told many assume the GOP support Bush and at one time I did but now I don’t. I do support freedom and liberty and for this reason I support Dr. Ron Paul.

  • In large measure, we wish merely to be left alone…Let us marry heterosexual couples among ourselves without fear that our pastors will lose the free choice of whom they will and will not grant the sanction of a religious marriage.

    I’d love to leave you alone. I don’t care who can or can’t get married in your church. I do care about equal treatment under the law, including equal civil marriage rights. And when gay marriage becomes legal in Ohio, my church will perform more than its share. We’ve been picketed twice for our support of same-sex relationships. We wish merely to be left alone.

    Let us teach our children the highly rational “values” of gentleness, kindness, love, self-discipline, truthfulness, courage, and the willingness to sacrifice in a good cause.

    Amen to that. Unfortunately, gentleness and kindness are far down the list of qualities I associate with the Right. Perhaps if the Right was more like you and less like James Dobson, Rod Parsley, et al, the world would be a better place.

  • KTinOhio, although it is true we would love to be left alone, we know now we will not be. Neutrality and isolationism, as desirable as they may be, have failed to protect traditional faith communities from direct assault. I have worked as a law intern for Liberty Counsel, a constitutional law practice specializing in religious liberty cases. It is mind-numbing how broad and intense is the effort to force private people of faith to act against their religiously informed conscience, to deny by their acts the teaching of their faith, to establish a schizophrenic dichotomy between private beliefs and public behavior. I have elsewhere equated it to a kind of spiritual rape. The opponents of traditional morality will not settle for equilibrium. They have their own sense of “holy war” that they are inflicting on many, many ordinary people who would really rather live the quiet, peaceful lives of believers.

    You suggest I am different from others on the Right, but most folks I know on “The Right” are much more like me than the parody I routinely see in the media. I am white, but I think sometimes I understand how blacks must have felt 40-50 years ago when all the movies of the era carried only thin caricatures of their true and richer life as a people. Your estimate of “The Right” appears to me to be such a caricature, unintended though it may be. I have spent my whole life among these people, and I know them as gentle, tolerant, and good people, with some exceptions of course. I also know that they realized during the 80’s that isolated political neutrality was hurting them, was setting them up as prisoners of a cultural ghetto, was positioning them for eventual forcible conversion to the false religion of militant secularism. They no longer believe that neutrality is possible. As I said in my earlier post, I know we can wait it out, because rejecting fundamental truth about human nature must always carry the seeds of its own destruction. However, not everyone on this side of the divide shares my optimism, which is why you sometimes see more vitriol than is appropriate coming from the Right. It is the reaction of a cornered animal. Many truly believe we have no choice but to fight. I suspect that something like this is at work in the Islamic mind as well, the difference being in our respective leaders, in that Jesus specifically rejected the use of physical force in bringing about the kingdom of God. We who follow Him in this respect do not see law as a tool to fabricate a Christian culture out of unwilling participants. Rather, we think that all people have an inner law that tells them when they have failed to love their neighbor, and that using the political, legal, and social processes, we can appeal to those “better angels” in those who disagree with us, and thus defend our way of life from those who seek our demise.

    As for equality under the law, any number of people can form relationships of love, regardless of gender. There is no law against such love, either in the Bible or in the US Code. However, marriage has obtained a special status in culture due in part to its unique connection with procreation and the state’s vested interest in encouraging healthy and successful procreative activity. Equal protection is not absolute in the law. I am not going to win a suit against an airline for failing to hire me as a pilot due to my poor vision and lack of training and skill for that activity. I am not equally situated with those who are fully qualified for the task, and the airline does not have to hire me. For those who are otherwise equally situated, unequal treatment is most egregious where immutable and otherwise irrelevant traits, such as skin color, become the basis of a pattern of discrimination. However, even skin color may become relevant in some situations, such as hiring a model for a tanning lotion geared for light-skinned people. The logical question is then this: If marriage is by definition a state-encouraged forum for natural procreation, which can only occur through the joining of sperm and egg, how is it “unequal access” to bar from marriage those who do not physically qualify for participation in the procreative act? Stretching the term “marriage” until it has no rational connection to biological truth will render it a meaningless term, and losing this honest, hard-working category will substantially interfere with the state’s interest in encouraging positive procreative relationships.

  • Speaking of right wing religious nutzoid positions – Rep. Ron Paul actually introduced legislation that would have ordained by US law that life begins at conception.

  • Lynchburger: “However, not everyone on this side of the divide shares my optimism, which is why you sometimes see more vitriol than is appropriate coming from the Right. It is the reaction of a cornered animal. Many truly believe we have no choice but to fight.”

    The paranoia of the religious right is truly monumental. On one hand there is general acclamation by the religious right that we live in a “christian nation.” Hence, we need “in god we trust” and “godly supreme court judges” and “right-thinking legislators.” On the other hand, christians are cornered animals, in mortal danger. From … whom? If you guys kept your psychoses to yourselves instead of trying to legislate them onto everybody else, you would likely not feel so threatened. On the other hand, I predict you would still feel paranoid. Paranoia seems to be a requirement for keeping the “right” culture flourishing. It needs an enemy — usually imaginary.

    “We who follow Him in this respect do not see law as a tool to fabricate a Christian culture out of unwilling participants.”

    Oh, I hope this is true. But what I see on the political horizon has not and does not reflect this.

    “The logical question is then this: If marriage is by definition a state-encouraged forum for natural procreation, which can only occur through the joining of sperm and egg, how is it “unequal access” to bar from marriage those who do not physically qualify for participation in the procreative act?”

    The logical problem is your “logical question” is an illogical strawman. Marriage is not a “state-encouraged forum for natural procreation.” Outside of religious right circles where do you find this definition? Marriage is a religious union of two people, usually state sanctioned, usually within a loving relationship, usually male/female, who commit to each other for companionship or raising a family or legal rights purposes. Doesn’t the fact that gay couples can adopt overcome your “not physically qualified” strawman? If not, are my wife and I, who are unable to have biological children together, somehow “not physically qualified” to be married or to have adopted?

    Gay marriage does not threaten my marriage. Or my adopted daughters. At all. It allows gay couples to have the same legal rights (e.g., inheritance, next-of-kin, common legal parenthood, etc.) that you and I hold without thought or effort — the same rights the “religious right” desperately wants to deny every gay couple in the US. And you say YOU are the cornered animal who doesn’t “see law as a tool to fabricate a Christian culture out of unwilling participants”?! Sheesh!

  • Neutrality and isolationism, as desirable as they may be, have failed to protect traditional faith communities from direct assault…It is mind-numbing how broad and intense is the effort to force private people of faith to act against their religiously informed conscience, to deny by their acts the teaching of their faith, to establish a schizophrenic dichotomy between private beliefs and public behavior. I have elsewhere equated it to a kind of spiritual rape. The opponents of traditional morality will not settle for equilibrium.

    With all due respect, I don’t buy this argument for a minute.

    As I said in my earlier post, I know we can wait it out, because rejecting fundamental truth about human nature must always carry the seeds of its own destruction. However, not everyone on this side of the divide shares my optimism, which is why you sometimes see more vitriol than is appropriate coming from the Right. It is the reaction of a cornered animal. Many truly believe we have no choice but to fight.

    I know the feeling. Let me ask you something: Have you ever had to cross a picket line to get to church? I have.

    However, marriage has obtained a special status in culture due in part to its unique connection with procreation and the state’s vested interest in encouraging healthy and successful procreative activity…Stretching the term “marriage” until it has no rational connection to biological truth will render it a meaningless term, and losing this honest, hard-working category will substantially interfere with the state’s interest in encouraging positive procreative relationships…I am not going to win a suit against an airline for failing to hire me as a pilot due to my poor vision and lack of training and skill for that activity. I am not equally situated with those who are fully qualified for the task, and the airline does not have to hire me…The logical question is then this: If marriage is by definition a state-encouraged forum for natural procreation, which can only occur through the joining of sperm and egg, how is it “unequal access” to bar from marriage those who do not physically qualify for participation in the procreative act?

    Why, then, should the state allow couples who are either unwilling or unable to have children to marry? Is there some kind of grandfather clause for infertile hetersexual couples? Or does the state have the right – indeed, the obligation – to test anyone applying for a marriage license to make sure they are able to conceive? If the state can require a blood test, why not a fertility test?

    As far as the state is concerned, marriage should be nothing more than a legal contract between two people defining certain rights and responsibilities. Of course, it should mean more than that to the people involved.

  • Um, unless I missed the memo, the Maryland Supreme Court is not a participating member of the “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.” Yet, lo and behold, what do they say about marriage in Conaway v. Deane, decided just two days ago? “In light of the fundamental nature of procreation, and the importance placed on it by the Supreme Court, safeguarding an environment most conducive to the stable propagation and continuance of the human race is a legitimate government interest.” Sounds enough like my definition to validate my earlier definition as NOT being a parochial product of the conservative ghetto, but something that has much broader scope in the history and tradition of American law.

    As for the biological qualification gray areas, such as infertile couples, such coupling represents a valuation of the abstraction of the procreative relationship. As in my earlier example, valuing human life as an abstraction also presents gray area problems. In general, it makes sense to treat each human life as sacred. Yet we do make exceptions. But those exceptions do not invalidate the social value of the generality. Defining life as sacred produces broadly positive results, despite the exceptions, whereas defining life as a mere exceptionless commodity has historically produced very demeaning results for societies. Similarly, while marriage as a forum for procreation is focused primarily on the state’s interest in actual procreation, its ability to succeed in that role relies directly on the abstraction of heterosexuality as the rational biological basis for such relationships. Thus, the essentially procreative definition of marriage not only survives its heterosexual exceptions, but these in fact reinforce it, raising it to the status of the sacred, that which carries a vital social symbol of procreation that transcends the biological defects characterizing some individual participants. Whereas, the Netherlander’s experiment with extreme redefinition of marriage to exclude the procreative symbiosis has provided clear evidence that the marriage concept collapses altogether under the weight of such irrational over-inclusiveness. Perhaps your marriage and mine are not directly threatened. Our future generations are indeed threatened.

    As for whether we are right to feel threatened, or are merely engaging in delusional paranoia, it was gay activist Michael Swift, not the “Radical Right,” who spewed forth the following stream of unvarnished hatred (thinly disguised as mere fantasy) as far back as 1987: “We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all male clubs, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us.” And “All homosexuals must stand together as brothers; we must be united artistically, philosophically, socially, politically and financially. We will triumph only when we present a common face to the vicious heterosexual enemy.” And, as if that were not enough, just to assure the right level of intimidation, we are told, “If you dare to cry faggot, fairy, queer, at us, we will stab you in your cowardly hearts and defile your dead, puny bodies.” Lots of love there, eh? Dr. Falwell never said anything remotely that hate-filled. Yet it is we who are cast as the “vicious heterosexual enemy.”

    Those of you who do not “buy” the fact that people of faith are presently being assaulted by this very mindset must be blissfully unaware of the steady stream of civil litigation threatening the freedoms of those now living in the cultural “ghetto” of traditional religion. You obviously don’t read our sources, you don’t listen to us, you don’t work in our law firms defending real people with real names and faces who are trying to live through these manufactured nightmares. You therefore have no right to speak about the state of our mind. You do not, you refuse, to understand it in a fair and objective manner. You may have crossed a picket line or two, but you have not shivered with fear inside a San Francisco church while a cadre of gay activists pounded on your doors in an irrational rage. Our people have had that enlightening experience. Give it a rest people, your hands are not so clean as you would like to think.

  • Dr. Falwell never said anything remotely that hate-filled.

    As I recall, he and Pat Robertson blamed me and millions like me for 9/11. What say ye to that?

  • You may have crossed a picket line or two, but you have not shivered with fear inside a San Francisco church while a cadre of gay activists pounded on your doors in an irrational rage

    Wow, they sound like a pack of cornered animals.

    FWIW, I’ve never heard of Michael Swift, and I’m sure 99% of the people on my side of the fence find his remarks (I’ll take your quote at face value) offensive, even if they were offered in jest.

  • Mormonism is NOT a Christian Faith

    LDS teaches that Elohim (God the Father in Mormonism) was once a mortal man and that he was not always God (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pg. 345).

    LDS teaches that God has a body of flesh and bones (see Alma 18:2-5, 24-28; Alma 22:9-11).

    LDS teaches the blood of Christ does not cleanse certain sins (Mormon Doctrine, pg. 92).

    LDS teaches that a person can lose his salvation if he is not baptized on behalf of dead relatives (Doctrines of Salvation 2:145,149).

    LDS teaches there is more than one God (see Alma 11:26-29).

    LDS teaches that if a man wishes to be saved he must have a woman by his side(as quoted on page 245 of The Miracle of Forgiveness).

    LDS teaches that the Black race (seed of Cain) survived the flood because the devil needed a representation on earth (Journal of Discourses 22:304).

    LDS teaches that God is the offspring of another God who, in turn, is the offspring of still another God, etc. (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pg.373).

    Galatians 1:9 (King James Version)
    9As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.

    Any faith not entirely based on the Bible is not a Christian Faith.This is not a statement raising one above the other, this is a statement of fact.

  • Does anyone reading this believe for a second that George Bush would have been elected twice without the conservative “values” voters? A Republican candidate will not win the presidency without those same voters. Candidates who ignore those voters do so at their and the Republican Party’s peril. The Democrats face the same issue with the far left (read Moveon.org). If the Democratic candidates ignore that base, they will have difficulty winning. Have ANY of the Democratic candidates commented negatively about the far left or ignored invites to participate in their events?
    Mike Huckabee, the winner of the Values Debate, reaches out to typically non-Republican groups (AARP, SEIU, Morgan State University) AND the conservative voters. Mark it down. If he can overcome the celebrity of his Republican opponents, he will defeat Sen. Clinton in ’08.

  • KT (may I call you that, as we are on such good terms here?), I appreciate the fact that we are having a fairly low decibel conversation about such wrenching topics. As a student at Liberty University, I knew Dr. Falwell fairly well, and had some direct contact with him. It is true he believed in mounting a strong campaign to affirm traditional morality. It is also true that the Christian faith, traditionally understood, views sexual deviancy as one of the divine markers of a nation ready to be judged adversely. Given that template, it was the most natural thing in the world for him to find an association between the cruel blow of 9/11 and the rise of militant homosexuality. Note the structure of the assumptions involved. 1) There is an ultimate Creator we call God. 2) As our Creator, God has full authority to say how we should live. 3) To help us out, God has provided some serious hints on how we should live in the Bible. 4) When the people of a given nation try to do what God requires, God keeps them safe and helps them prosper. 5) When they reject the hints and try to be their own gods, God lets them run off on their own and try to play god. They lose divine protection. 6) 9/11 clearly looks like God decided on that day to let the enemy strike us hard. 7) God is a rational being, and therefore must have removed His protection as punishment for something. 8) Since the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans clearly suggests a slippery slope of degeneracy that begins with suppression of divine truths and ends with sexual chaos, that something for which we are being punished must be the current extremes of sexual sin. Now, before anyone attacks this sequence as my own, I believe I have a somewhat more nuanced view of the matter, which I will describe shortly.

    Why then do I point it out like this? I want to know where the hate is in this pattern of reasoning. I don’t see it. There is nothing in the foregoing sequence which suggests that I should not love my neighbor, regardless of his or her sexual practices. As a Christian, I am to love not only those who are like-minded with me, but those who are adverse to my well-being, those who hate me. I am under a command of Jesus Himself to bless those who curse me. This includes those who murder, those who lie, those who slander, as well as those possessed by perverse lusts. All this evil is indeed the basis of God’s judgment, as it was when God judged the world with water a few millennia ago. However, that fact does not, cannot, instill hatred in me. Who am I but a nobody, just as wicked as any other child of Adam. I myself deserve God’s judgment. If national moral guilt was the basis for what happened on 9/11, then mark me down as one of the causes of 9/11 too. Does any of this create a basis for hating some other sinner for their particular sins, as if I was somehow superior to them? I don’t think so. And at a personal level, this was true for Dr. Falwell as well. I know he had no personal animus against any class of individuals. He drew conclusions about 9/11 that were premature and not carefully thought out in the full context of Biblical truth, but he did not harbor any desire to injure anyone. He was a man who did practice a love for his enemies. A will to permanently destroy the well-being of another? That is hatred. A will to help another avoid their own destruction and recover their well-being? That is love.

    As for our “cornered animal” subplot, look up the Hamilton Square Baptist Church Riot of 1993 in San Fran. I take it to be a pivotal event in the psyche of conservative American Christianity. I think we had a collective flashback to the days of Roman lions. It helped us see through the “jesting” of Mr. Swift to the cold, hard, real hatred that animates militant homosexuality. Then, like our infamous cornered animal, we realized on a broader basis that flight was not possible, and all that remained was fight. Go read about the riot. Listen to the audio. Put yourself on our side of the thundering metal doors of the church, with gays outside trying to kick those doors in and shouting “give us your children” (a virtual quote of Swift), and nine-year old boys uncontrollably in terror for the safety and integrity of their own little bodies. Put yourself there and tell me honestly you wouldn’t feel a bit “cornered.”

    But unlike a cornered animal, Christians are expected to rise above their fears and love their enemies, no matter what the sense of threat. I know from personal experience that can be a difficult state to achieve. Fear can cloud your judgment, can draw you to the dark side of pure self-preservation, can make you act inconsistently with your stated beliefs. Jesus not only achieved a real love for His enemies, but He went further, in that He surrendered His life to achieve the well-being of His enemies. But in doing so, He did not pander to their lusts or their distorted view of truth just to be their friend. He constantly challenged them to get outside themselves and recognize the right of their Creator to govern their hearts. He never told them they could reengineer the designs of God if that would help them find happiness. Instead, He commanded them to obey the laws of their Creator, because He knew their greatest happiness rested in coming home to the heart of their Creator. Nothing could be a greater expression of love than this, that one lays down his life for those he loves, even when misunderstood and vilified for speaking healing truth to them. I know this perspective is widespread in the conservative camp. It is integral to being a Christian. If it has been obscured to you, blame the Devil. Or the media. But please don’t blame us, at least not most of us. We love you, even it is a flavor of love with which you are unfamiliar. We call it “speaking the truth in love.” Once you get used to it, you can never go back to cheap imitations.

  • Um, quick note. The smiley with sunglasses in my previous post was an accident. It’s supposed to simply be the number 8, the eighth point in my sequence of propositions. I didn’t realize it would make a smiley out of that. Sorry.

  • Lynchburger:

    In case you’re wondering, I don’t live in a liberal bubble. In fact, my wife and my best friend are both conservative Christians. I have no reason to doubt your motives or your sincerity, and I admire your willingness to venture into “hostile” territory to share your point of view. Perhaps if there were more discussions like this one, Left and Right wouldn’t see each other as mortal enemies.

    That said, I would like to share the following quotes with you:

    “I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you….I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good….Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.” (1993)

    “When I, or people like me, are running the country, you’d better flee, because we will find you, we will try you, and we will execute you.” (1995, reportedly said of doctors who perform abortions)

    The source of these quotes was Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue. Your response might be to insist that Mr. Terry does not speak for the entire Christian Right. While you would be correct – the Christian Right is not as monolithic as some may believe – I would counter that Mr. Terry’s views are more representative of the Right than Michael Swift’s are of the Left, and I don’t want to live in Mr. Terry’s world any more than you want to live in Mr. Swift’s world. Let’s make a deal; I won’t hang Mr. Terry’s words around your neck if you don’t hang Mr. Swift’s words around mine.

    Operation Rescue is now known as Operation Save America (OSA), and, to the best of my knowledge, Mr. Terry is no longer part of it. On July 18, 2004, OSA picketed morning services at First Community Church in Columbus, Ohio. (I have been a member of FCC for five years.) OSA objected to FCC’s acceptance of same-sex relationships, our acceptance of female clergy – the minister who led that morning’s service was referred to as “pastorette” on OSA’s web site – and our progressive theological views. I might disagree with everything another church espouses, but I would never dream of picketing its services.

    Your detailed description of Rev. Falwell’s assumptions regarding the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the nature of God point out the stark differences in our views of God and of the world.

    (1) “There is an ultimate Creator we call God.” No problem there.

    (2) “As our Creator, God has full authority to say how we should live.” See (3) below.

    (3) “To help us out, God has provided some serious hints on how we should live in the Bible.” Unless I am mistaken – and I’m sure you’ll let me know if I am – this is the source of our disagreement. You see the Bible as God’s words to man, authoritative in every respect. I – and progressive Christians in general – see it as man’s words to and about God. The books that came to be called the Bible are the product of ancient cultures very different from our own. They were written, edited, and compiled by people with their own biases and who were no more “inspired” than you and me. Don’t misunderstand; the Bible is a source of great wisdom, but it must be read with discernment. Leviticus might be clear that homosexuality is an abomination, but it is equally clear that eating pork and shellfish, trimming one’s facial hair, and planting different kinds of seed in the same field are also abominations. You leave yourself open to charges of scriptural cherry-picking if you accept some biblical injunctions and ignore others.

    (4) “When the people of a given nation try to do what God requires, God keeps them safe and helps them prosper.” Jesus never said anything like this. As I recall, Jesus was one of many people who tried to do what God expects and ended up dead. So much for prosperity.

    (5) “When they reject the hints and try to be their own gods, God lets them run off on their own and try to play god. They lose divine protection.” See (7) below.

    (6) “9/11 clearly looks like God decided on that day to let the enemy strike us hard.” See (7) below.

    (7) “God is a rational being, and therefore must have removed His protection as punishment for something.” Oh, where to begin? First, your conception of God is much more anthropomorphic than mine. Second, Dr. Falwell’s assertion that 9/11 was caused or allowed by God flies in the face of scripture. In Luke 13, Jesus recounts the story of the death of eighteen people when the tower of Siloam collapsed. Jesus was clear that these people were no more guilty than were the many who were not killed; they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Likewise, in the Old Testament, the book of Job tells of a man who did not deserve his great suffering. And non-Biblical history is also replete with examples of good people suffering at the hand of man (e.g., the Holocaust) or of nature (e.g., Katrina). We are discussing theodicy; why would an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and loving God allow tragedies He/She could prevent? I have no problem with this issue because my view of God is akin to process theology, which doesn’t require a God who actively intervenes in the world but instead persuades rather than coerces people to act in certain ways. I realize this view is anathema among most conservative Christians, perhaps including yourself.

    (8) “Since the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans clearly suggests a slippery slope of degeneracy that begins with suppression of divine truths and ends with sexual chaos, that something for which we are being punished must be the current extremes of sexual sin.” See (3) above. Actually, it is difficult to draw a clear case against homosexuality from the Bible. In the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18-19), the sin of the two cities is never fully explained. There is no mention of consensual homosexual relations; the men of the city approach Lot because they want to rape the two angels. I have already addressed the prohibitions outlined in Leviticus. In Romans 1, Paul states that God led the men to “[abandon] natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another” as a consequence of idolatry. Most telling of all, there is no mention of homosexuality anywhere in the four Gospels; if Jesus said anything about it, no one wrote it down.

    We all try to live our lives according to the dictates of our consciences, and for many of us, our consciences are guided at least in part by our religious beliefs. If your beliefs lead you to view homosexuality in general, and same-sex marriage in particular, as detestable, I have no choice but to accept this. But I do not have to accept the imposition of your religious views on the entire population through ostensibly secular law. A century and a half ago, some churches cited scripture as they opposed the abolition of slavery. Fifty years ago, interracial marriage was illegal in many states; we now see that prohibition of interracial marriage was based on nothing more than prejudice. Fifty years from now, people will look back in wonder that people were denied the benefits of a legally recognized monogamous relationship due to nothing more than their choice of a partner of the same sex. I said it before, and I will say it again; if the United States doesn’t stand for equal treatment under the law for all citizens – regardless of sexual preference – what does it stand for?

    We’re already three pages removed from Page 1, which I take as a not-so-subtle hint that we should either end this discussion or move it elsewhere. Either way, I have enjoyed our little exchange, and I hope you have come away with an appreciation for our positions, even if you don’t agree with them.

    KTinOhio
    September 22, 2007

  • wouldn’t it be just great if we could again return to an America where voters and candidates alike realize that they can be good Christians (or Muslums or non-believers, ect.) AND good citizens and that the two are not synonymous or at odds; they just are not related in any real way. What I wish for our society has nothing to do with what rights I know we are all born into. So much time and money has been wasted in the past years fighting about moral issues in the political arena when if we could just all acknowledge the constitutionality of separation of religious beliefs and civil liberties we would ALL be free to help, counsel, and support what is morally preferred in our society. I for one would be glad to pledge to mentor teens for five hours/week regarding the responsibilities of being sexually active (AND the debate of weather they want to be sexually active) if the Right would just stop its assault on my basic rights.

    Blue for good reason, Connie

  • KT, greetings. I wonder if you missed my caveat regarding Dr. Falwell’s comments about 9/11. I specifically said I had a more nuanced view than the assumptions I had listed for consideration. I laid out that logic as typical of the reasoning process of many in the Religious Right. While I think that logic is inadequate, I also think it does not require hate-think to produce such a line of reasoning, and that was the main point I was trying to make. Perhaps this would be as good a time as any to highlight where we converge and diverge on this series of propositions.

    1) God as Creator. While we may agree in principle, I think there must be some bedrock differences in understanding what it means to be the Creator of all things, especially considering your process approach. This comes out in the following points.

    2) God’s Authority as Creator. As God, logically defined as the supreme being past which there can be no higher power, God gave our universe being and shape and content from absolutely nothing. He is not in debt to anyone for resources used. He did not merely reconstitute pre-existing materiality, but created all that is, including love, communication, truth, the law of non-contradiction, sunrises, babies, even time itself. Therefore, in order to even question His authority, we must use things that He created. We try to apply logic and come up with sometimes bad answers to hard problems. But logic is there because He is there. His authority as Creator is absolutely pervasive, woven into every fiber of reality. This is essential to the next premise.

    3) God’s Communication with Humankind. I understand your view of Scripture, At times I am tempted to believe it myself. Several things help me overcome such temptation. First, there is resonance. Many religious texts do contain common human wisdom, such that anyone with the experience of life knows some things to be true, no matter who has said it. However, when an ostensibly human writing such as the Bible, on careful reading, resonates deeply with the whole of life the way we have experienced it, that raises hope that God is communicating through it. Unlike a truthful book about, say, manufacturing boats, it speaks to the core needs of humanity, addressing in a unique and profound way the human quest for love and meaning. Recognizing this resonance is, admittedly, a largely subjective venture. But that’s the very point. This particular collection of writings has reached the subjective person so intimately that it suggests the Author knew more than the average writer about the inmost struggles of the human heart, including the challenges of human sexuality. If that was all the Bible had going for it, it would be impressive at that. But there is more.

    There is prophecy. Those prophecies that were spoken by people living hundreds of years before the predicted events demonstrate one of three things: Either remarkable coincidence, remarkable textual elasticity, or a remarkable relationship of the Author to the space-time continuum (contra the “process” premise). The coincidence theory is very popular, but mathematically incredible. For example, there are 300-plus Old Testament prophecies concerning the Jewish Messiah. That all those prophecies should be fulfilled in a single individual has a probability term that approaches zero. Someone has run the numbers and analogized it to the likelihood of finding one marked silver dollar in a stack of silver dollars forty feet high covering the state of Texas, on the first try. Not a chance. What then? The textual elasticity theory says that the prophecies are written in such a way that they could be conformed to any number of circumstances (as in Nostradamus’ case). This may be superficially true for some of them. Many, however, are delivered with such detail and specificity as to defy fulfillment in any but a small set of possible circumstances. What are the odds that Jesus would have a seamless robe for which the Romans would gamble, in direct fulfillment of Psalm 22? What are the odds that King David, who lived hundreds of years before the practice of crucifixion, would give such a detailed account of the deadly process as if he experienced it himself, yet without any evidence from the history of his life that he personally experienced such an event (also in Psalm 22)? What sense does it make to find a virtually Christian theology of the atonement, coupled with a description of one who dies with the wicked, is buried with the rich, and yet comes to a lively prosperity even after dying, in Isaiah 53, written hundreds of years before Christ? How is it that Daniel’s prophecy of the exact year of Messiah’s appearance just happens to have the Messiah appearing during the lifetime of this same Jesus? No, elasticity cannot account for the many such statements of the prophets concerning Messiah and many other things as well. The elephant in the room is that God knew, and God told someone about it, and they wrote it down. Too obvious to be true, right? There must be a more twisted explanation. Or not. It is obvious that if God is the absolute Creator of absolutely everything, He is simply in a position to know the end from the beginning. It is equally obvious that those communications in which he has demonstrated this unique power have a greater claim to authenticity than those which lack such an insignia of divine origin. It is perfectly reasonable to expect that He should want to communicate with us, as we are His creatures, and that knowing us as only He does, He could do it in a way that succeeded. Prophecy carries that kind of signal. Yet He has provided us one more thing.

    There is the resurrection. If there ever was a person who carried the message of the heart of God to humankind, it was Jesus. Yet the establishment of His day rejected Him and killed Him, as you pointed out. If this had happened without a resurrection following, Christianity would have died on the spot too. It would have been nothing more than a footnote in the history of Judaism, a sect that temporarily surfaced but was, like so many others, destroyed by violent opposition. Yet the resurrection stands as the only reasonable way to understand why the nascent Christian community survived the initial attempt to abort it. Twelve men, cowering in hiding, fearing for their lives, deeply disappointed that Jesus did not bring in the Kingdom in the form they expected, became the most formidable witnesses for the resurrection event. Pressing their cause, not with violence, but with love and a resolve to confess Jesus as the resurrected Messiah, even when the price for such commitment was death, can hardly be explained by fanatical devotion to a known falsehood. They behaved as men who knew what they knew. They knew. Jesus was indeed alive again. Other arguments support this, but this one reaches me. I know I would give up a lie at swordpoint, and I have no tendency to buy into religious illusions. Before the resurrection, these men acted just as I would under similar circumstances. Self-preservation is something I do understand. But no, something really happened here, something brought about this death-defying transformation, and the objective observer must at least consider the obvious: The stated event actually occurred as stated. Jesus lives. In living, He authenticates the Bible as a valid communication from God.

    Therefore, the Bible may reasonable be seen as a working communication between the Creator and the creature. Yet much of what it teaches is accessible through rational thought. This should not be surprising in that God produced both the book and the universe about which the book was written. God’s laws concerning sexuality are not harsh impositions of some outsider trying to wrest control. They are an explication of the deign principles God has built into human nature itself. There is no need to set up a false dichotomy between the word of God and the world of God. They are mutually reinforcing, when carefully and thoughtfully evaluated. In fact, a systematic study of the progressive revelation in Scripture is a far better antidote to cherry-picking than simply throwing it all over as mere human opinion. I can’t cherry pick the sermon on the mount. I frequently fail at being meek. Can I edit that out? No. On the other hand, do I have to worry about shellfish? No. God revealed that the dietary commands were teaching tools regarding spiritual uncleanness, and now that Jesus has come and taken away our uncleanness through His death, we are not obligated to remain under such temporary practices. If that’s cherry-picking, then no progression in human understanding of divine principles is possible. Whereas, if I can simply quote those parts of the Bible that appear to support my special cause, with no commitment to the overall truth of the book, then the Bible may be made to support anything and everything, regardless of the degree of internal contradiction. To me, that is real cherry-picking.

    (4) God’s conditional care for nations. It is true that in the Bible, the concept of national blessing is largely focused on the nation of Israel prior to the coming of Jesus. Many on the religious right are quick to quote Old Testament passages in support of a nationalistic Christianity that would induce God to bless us as He did in the past. The Old Testament does indeed support the idea that a people, as a national people, who turns from sin and does righteously will experience blessing. Many of the prophets are devoted to this theme, telling Israel to repent and regain God’s blessing, including prosperity. (See 2 Chronicles 7:14). The fact that Jesus did not focus on this national dimension reflects His emphasis on the spiritual nature of the coming Kingdom of God. I think Jesus put the emphasis where it should be, on the individual heart, and I therefore agree that it is patently wrong to draw a direct analogy between a nationalistic Christianity, compulsorily enforced, and divine approval accompanied by unimaginable blessing. The church is nowhere called to convert political systems per se, though nowhere are they denied the right to play a role as citizens of any given place. We all bring our preferences to the table. So? Why shouldn’t we? On the other hand, a cup of cold water gets you farther with God than many miraculous wonders. Go figure.

    (5) God does abandon people to idolatry, and to the socially harmful consequences of it. See Romans 1. “Judgment” is built in to rejecting truth, because self-induced lies blind one to the sharp edges of a hard reality. It just gets easier to hurt yourself. No anthropomorphism required here. No hatred either. Just facts.

    (6) Bad things happen to people for a variety of reasons. True. 9/11 does not appear to me to be a good thing. Yet I was myself going to use the analogy you cited of the eighteen people killed by the fall of the tower of Siloam, as a caveat against drawing hasty connections between bad events and divine judgment. I forgot to remember to mention it. As Jesus points out in that teaching moment, those feeling good about themselves for not being among the eighteen have no standing for such feelings of superiority. God is no respecter of persons. We are all in a whole lot of trouble and apart from repentance will all face a similar demise someday. That however does not make it unreasonable to think that there are no consequences to evil behavior. There will be a narrowing of the stream of good when it is clogged by the sludge of evil. This is only natural, and one does not need a Bible to recognize it, although the Bible teaches it as well. That Dr. Falwell and others may have drawn hasty conclusions about specific causation does not mean the overarching principle of national goodness is wrong. It may have been misapplied. But a nation that does good will benefit from doing so. Otherwise, you are making the argument that what a nation does is morally irrelevant to God, that God is either capricious or not in total control, and that cannot be right. The emphasis of process theology on defining God’s control down to build up the case for human autonomy seems to me to be more an escapist solution than a useful theodicy.

    (7) God acts, and acts rationally, in connection with the good or evil done by people, providing protection for the good and punishment for the evil. It is true this can be treated far too simplistically. Job is a great example, but again, it is cherry-picking to appeal to Job if there is no guarantee of revelatory truth. I could cherry-pick all those instances where God did act to judge individual and collective wickedness. The mudslides of Nineveh comes to mind. Or the world-wide flood. And yes, Sodom and Gomorrah as well. Incidentally, you say they wanted to rape the angels, but do recall that the angels were in the form of men (Genesis 18:22), and the mob specifically rejected Lot’s daughters as substitutes. Clearly, the attraction was same-sex. While it is true that Sodom was in trouble with God for many reasons besides sexual deviancy, what could be more appalling than for these men to greet their Creator and His angels with a blind homoerotic lust for glandular pleasure? No, when taken as a whole, the Scriptures appear to teach both humility in judging the calamities that befall us, and reverence for the benefits or hazards of national moral character.

    As for the difference in our view of God, it is odd to me to think of God as a being of pure love who yet cannot express that love to His creatures because He is barred from intervention by the overriding need to maintain human autonomy. Does not God “actively intervene in the world” even when He is only persuading? If He did not persuade, would we not be even more free? For as God, He would know better than anyone how to persuade with extreme effectiveness. Persuasion is all about knowing what a person needs and wants. He made us. Who could know our needs and wants better than He? Then, to be fair to us, to be truly non-coercive, He should simply pretend to not exist at all, as that would yield the greatest human freedom, wouldn’t it? But really, that is a false dichotomy, because persuasion and coercion mean one thing among humans as peers, but are in a different class altogether when in context of the Creator/creature relationship. Did He no coerce us into being in the first place, or did He merely persuade us to emerge from nothing to something? Therefore, it is not so much that the process/open theism view is anathema among traditional Christians (which indeed it is), but more that it is impossible to hold consistently. If God does anything at all, He is interfering with that with which He interacts. If He created all things, His interference is the default consequence of causing beings to be at all. There is no escape. Yet if God does nothing at all, he becomes more static than anything Aristotle envisioned. No, it is more balanced to see Him as being involved in His own creation, being static in those things that define His divinity, yet expressing those things in the matrix of time and space in ways we, His creatures, can comprehend and relate to. I say He can express His love, and often coerces some poor sinner to a better life, much as a loving father would coerce a child to get out of the way of an oncoming car. Intervention, coercion, and love are not inherently opposing forces.

    (8) Paul’s slippery slope of degeneracy. As I stated above, unlike some on the Right, I personally do not see sexual degeneracy as the sole cause of God’s actions against a given individual or nation. Sin is more comprehensive than that. It affects the whole range of human activity. However, if you wish to assert that same-sex relationships are not part of the problem at all, you have a more difficult proof than I. First, it amounts to cherry-picking again to say that the Bible is not authoritative but here are some passages which I should take as authoritative. For now, I will overlook that as an overlooked inconsistency on your part.

    Regarding Sodom and Gomorrah, consent was not the central issue, but the gender of the would-be victims under Lot’s protection. You have asserted the interest of the mob was rape, but the account does not preclude consent as a cultural factor. Note that initially, they sought Lot’s consent to take the men. As the presiding authority of his home and family, Lot was the right person to ask. This is not how consent works in modern western cultures, but it is a possibility in the middle-eastern culture of that time. Therefore, they did initially seek quasi-consensual relations with these angels. The Bible says Lot was a righteous man. What was his reaction to their request for Lot’s consent? Don’t do this wicked thing. If rape was the core issue, why did Lot offer his daughters? They would be just as unwilling as any male guest would be to surrender to the mob. No, clearly gender was the core issue.

    Furthermore, the New Testament explication of the cause of their condemnation is silent respecting rape, and never even mentions consent:

    Jude 1:7: Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

    The phrase “giving themselves over to fornication” carries the idea, in the greek, of an obsession with sex. They were intensely preoccupied with it. This sets up the context for “strange flesh,” which refers, arguably, to unnatural sexual passions. In the context of Jude’s authorship, this bears on homosexual passion, consensual or otherwise. Jude was an ordinary Jew, other than his faith in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. In the dominant Jewish template of the time, natural passions could only be satisfied in the context of a heterosexual marriage. Therefore, such passions would not only exclude homosexual behavior, but even heterosexual behavior among the unmarried. Note that for Jude, the condemnation of Sodom and Gomorrah focused on non-marital sexual activity with no reference to consent whatsoever. If Jude believed that only non-consensual forms of sexual relations were condemned, it is inexplicable that he did not make that distinction here.

    As for Leviticus, it is serious error to make no distinctions concerning the laws given to the people of Israel. God used Israel to bring into being the prophesied “seed of the woman,” who would “crush the head of the serpent.” He did many things with Israel that laid the groundwork for the arrival of Messiah. The temple service and all the ornate rituals, the many dietary laws, the geographical concern for the temple mount, even the long Jewish genealogies proving his Davidic claim to the throne, were all essential elements of preparing the world for the advent of His incarnation and ministry. Yet, when that mission was complete, the grand, inches thick curtain in the temple, which shrouded the entrance to the Holy of Holies, was miraculously torn in two. Symbolically, the shadows of the old system of sacrifice and temple worship, and the monopoly of Moses over relationships between men and God, had come to an end. But principles of morality, which have universal designs of God as their basis, survived that transition from the teaching tools to the real thing. All the moral commands of the Old Testament are repeated by either Jesus or His apostles, and are therefore obligatory to the church. All those commands pertaining to the specific relation ship of God with national Israel were either ignored or specifically remanded as not applicable to the church by either Jesus or His apostles.

    As you have observed, in the New Testament we do have Paul commenting on homosexual behavior, and in a clearly consensual context. Oddly, I agree in principle when you say that, “In Romans 1, Paul states that God led the men to “[abandon] natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another” as a consequence of idolatry.” I don’t get how this works to support your argument. Idolatry is a very broad concept in Scripture. It is incredibly unlikely that Paul is limiting this to statue worship. Idolatry is the setting up of one’s own reason as the supreme authority for moral decision-making. It is asking the question, what part of creation do you honor more than your own Creator? If there is such an object of reverence in your life, it is your idol. Is it your mind, your self-esteem, your family, your job, your pleasure glands? Therefore, yes, God did then and still does now abandon people to the natural consequences of severely distorted priorities. If we worship other than God, that other will dominate and consume us, even to our own destruction. Paul is making this point in Roman 1 as part of his “legal brief” against humanity, showing them all, both Jew and Gentile, to be in a contemptible state of sin, and fully deserving God’s judgment, due to their several idolatries. Therefore, I agree with your statement because, as I understand it, Paul could hardly be clearer that homosexual desire is a byproduct of idolatry, and I believe this to be true.

    As for the teaching of Jesus, He did speak to human sexuality. True, he did not directly mention homosexuality. Neither did he mention rape, bondage and discipline, eroto-defecation, bestiality, or shooting up. Will you seriously argue that He had no qualms with any of those activities, simply because he did not mention them? I doubt it. However, Jesus was once asked a technical question about divorce, what would be a valid cause of it under Moses. He answered that adultery was the only valid cause under Moses. But then He went beyond Moses, as He often did, and laid out the divine paradigm for human sexual relationship: A man shall leave his parents, and shall stay with his “woman,” as the Greek puts it, and they two shall be as one flesh. The natural paradigm thus excludes alternatives. The restoration to “one flesh” is a partial recapturing of the Edenic condition, when man and woman were in fact a single entity, until God separated the woman from the man, as He separated light from darkness, and dry land from sea. This is so profound that no imitation can even approximate it, and every diversion from it is an insult to the wisdom and beauty of the creative work of God. This is why Jesus did not need to specifically address subsidiary sexual issues. By singling out the “one flesh” paradigm as the right rule, even as superior to the law of Moses concerning dissolution of such relationships, Jesus forever excluded all variations that did not rise to the criteria stated in the paradigm. One man, one woman, in a permanent bond of union.

    As far as Randall Terry goes, he wants to see punished those whom he sees as murderers. You want to see serial murderers get away with their crime? Probably not. So we can disagree whether an abortion doctor is a murderer, but once that assumption is granted, it is not hard to understand the desire for justice. Where I part ways with Mr. Terry is his notion of militant conquest. Jesus told His disciples to put up their swords. He taught that His kingdom was not one that could be made with human force. Mr. Terry is right to love justice, but he is wrong to turn a spiritual kingdom into an earthly one. I will gladly wear half of what he says, the half concerning justice, and disavow the rest. But I can find nothing in Swift that a reasonable person like yourself would be inclined to support. Furthermore, I believe his fervent ill-will to traditional moralists pervades the larger movement. I have seen evidence of it. As I said before, the Hamilton Square Mob virtually quoted Swift during their assault on the good people of that church. It was a monstrous deed, and yet the police were afraid to intervene because the gay-favoring city council had already committed themselves to supporting whatever the gay mob did. To the extent this animus underlies the larger movement, they are a far greater threat to us than we are to them.

    I will be amazed if you read the entirety of this post. I am sorry it is so large, but you must admit it is a large topic. I appreciate the time you’ve taken and hope, as you do for me, that perhaps you have a better insight to the inner working of the Right, and perhaps a tad more empathy with those couch potatoes and grandmas driven to picket religious institutions that are slowly but steadily strengthening the hand of the Hamilton Square Mob. Take care.

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