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Every year I am consistently surprised to see some other wing-nut wacko dusting off an antediluvian theory, as fact, in some organ of the mainstream media. Where do these antiquated ideas come from, and how can people believe in them?
If you happen to catch almost any fundamental preacher on his bully-pulpit (Youtube or regular TV), you can be pretty sure that they’re going to to say something objectionable. Most are in favor of some version of bronze age mythology that they want the government to adopt as factual truth, imperative and law, so that it can be imposed on everybody else. There is a word for this: Dominion.
What are some of these ideas? One well known preacher (Bryan Fischer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6PjAYNl24E) will tell you that no woman should ever be in any position of authority, especially over any man. His authority for this? The Bible and the “fact” that 21 centuries ago, Jesus may have only picked men as disciples. Other clerics tell people they will face eternal damnation for sins their children have allegedly committed (http://womanrebel.blogspot.com/2012/10/archbishop-tells-woman-to-reject-gay.html). This, again, is supported by Old Testament, Biblical interpretation and medieval reasoning. Nothing to do with, “Love thy neighbor,” or that thing about casting the first stone. Or any other inconvenient teachings of Jesus Christ, the guy their religion is named after. These jokers almost always like the teachings of the Old Testament better than the good news in the New Testament.
These guys are gung-ho on books, certain books that is. But, only books that agree with what they want to believe in the first place. (That’s handy, isn’t it?) The same Bryan Fisher, long time associate of the American Family Association (AFA - http://www.afa.net/) thinks Hitler was a homosexual because he read it in a book (http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Hitler-Lothar-Machtan/dp/0465043097). He believes lots of bad things about homosexuals, of course, so it’s just icing on his moral cake if Hitler was a homosexual. I am frankly surprised he doesn’t advocate the view that Lenin and Stalin were homosexual. According to his version of reason, it makes sense that they would be, and so they must have been.
In the CNN interview in which he went into his views about Hitler’s sexual orientation, he began by denouncing Mix-it-Up Day (http://www.tolerance.org/mix-it-up/what-is-mix) as a thinly veiled attack on right-thinking Judeo-Christians in support of the Homosexual Agenda. On the way to Hitler, he launched into a vehement attack on the Southern Poverty Law Center (http://www.splcenter.org/) which has called the AFA a “hate group” (http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/american-family-association).
Why is all this anger and hate surfacing today? I know why anti-choice is promoted, but anti-contraception? Hey, if you don’t want women to have abortions, you’ve got to want them to have contraceptives, unless your real objective here is that women just not have sex. They also say men have a need for sex, and women don’t. I can’t believe any real, down-home, confident heterosexual would want women to not have sex. Who are they advocating that men have sex with, if not women? Could this be some kind of a Freudian, latent-homosexual thing?
The term “War on Women” has been used, and overused, in the press of late, and I hate to use it, but I can think of nothing else that is so accurately descriptive. There is a whole legion of people in these United States who, for a variety of wing-nut reasons, want to take away every gain women have made in the past three hundred years and return them to the status of male possessions and breeding stock. It is kind of amusing to note that the most ardent proponents of these views happen to be violently allergic to people of the faith of Islam, many of whose religious leaders hold exactly the same views on a woman’s place.
Look at what has been seriously suggested by these “right-thinking” men:
. . . and many, many more . . . .
Sounds like a plan that any self-respecting 17th century man could get behind, doesn’t it? Except that it isn’t true. The 17th century was, after all, the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment. It was an age in which the old ideas of determinist, rigid authority from the top down were gradually overturned and replaced by ideas of democracy, liberty, equality and diversity as being the highest aspirations of mankind. It is the children of these men and women who fought hard to get the international trade in slaves made illegal. Not to say that these men and women would be what we, today, would call “PC” but it is appalling to me that anyone in an advanced 21st Century Western Democracy, born of and steeped in the traditions and ideas of the enlightenment, could be less tolerant and enlightened than their ancestors of four hundred years ago.
I suppose one of the reasons I most object to these Bible thumping misogynists is that they make me embarrassed to be from the same time and place as they come from. Of course, I also object to their ideas because they are anti-ethical, prejudiced, harmful, and just plain wrong, but that’s just my opinion.
The only saving grace most of these types have is that what they say is said for effect. They say these horrible things, take their money and quietly depart, having actually done nothing. At least I hope they have done nothing. Most of them do nothing, other that promulgate hate and lies. The gospels they are so fond of, promise that innocent people who suffer persecution on the basis of groundless hate and lies will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Nice work, if you can get it. It is a kind of irony that these Holy Rollers work so hard to usher the objects of their hate into such a favored position in Heaven.
The question remains, how do these folks get to this awful place, and is there any way we can reclaim them and return them to rationality? Or are they so far gone that there is no hope for them? Are they some of the flotsam and jetsam of the human progress toward enlightened tolerance and understanding? If we cannot repair their minds or influence their hearts, how can we prevent them from harming themselves or others? Because every now and again someone with a more classic form of insanity takes heed of these people, and then bad things happen. Sometimes, people die. These are the suicide bombers and avenging serial killers of our age. While those who perpetrate actual evil are punished, those who sow the roots of evil often are not.
And it is evil. That was not a mistake or overstatement. Recommending the death of two women for the crime of loving each other is only a small step from pulling the trigger. Advocating the powerlessness of all women is only a heartbeat from rape.
We all need to recognize this evil, even in ourselves, in our own hearts, and we need to fight it there first, right now, and always. And when we recognize this in others, we need to do our best to help them fight it, too, with humility, tolerance, and with understanding - the very tools of love that they deny to their victims.
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