Re: Gay McCarthyism - "Feel the (Heterophobic) Hate"
Ted Evans, Jr.
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NYTimes.com > Opinion
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Feel the Hate
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 3, 2004
I don't know where George Soros gets his money," one man said. "I don't know where - if it comes from overseas or from drug groups or where it comes from." George Soros, another declared, "wants to spend $75 million defeating George W. Bush because Soros wants to legalize heroin." After all, a third said, Mr. Soros "is a self-admitted atheist; he was a Jew who figured out a way to survive the Holocaust."
They aren't LaRouchies - they're Republicans.
The suggestion that Mr. Soros, who has spent billions promoting democracy around the world, is in the pay of drug cartels came from Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, whom the Constitution puts two heartbeats from the presidency. After standing by his remarks for several days, Mr. Hastert finally claimed that he was talking about how Mr. Soros spends his money, not where he gets it.
The claim that Mr. Soros's political spending is driven by his desire to legalize heroin came from Newt Gingrich. And the bit about the Holocaust came from Tony Blankley, editorial page editor of The Washington Times, which has become the administration's de facto house organ.
For many months we've been warned by tut-tutting commentators about the evils of irrational "Bush hatred." Pundits eagerly scanned the Democratic convention for the disease; some invented examples when they failed to find it. Then they waited eagerly for outrageous behavior by demonstrators in New York, only to be disappointed again.
There was plenty of hatred in Manhattan, but it was inside, not outside, Madison Square Garden.
Barack Obama, who gave the Democratic keynote address, delivered a message of uplift and hope. Zell Miller, who gave the Republican keynote, declared that political opposition is treason: "Now, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief." And the crowd roared its approval.
Why are the Republicans so angry? One reason is that they have nothing positive to run on (during the first three days, Mr. Bush was mentioned far less often than John Kerry).
The promised economic boom hasn't materialized, Iraq is a bloody quagmire, and Osama bin Laden has gone from "dead or alive" to he-who-must-not-be-named.
Another reason, I'm sure, is a guilty conscience. At some level the people at that convention know that their designated hero is a man who never in his life took a risk or made a sacrifice for his country, and that they are impugning the patriotism of men who have.
That's why Band-Aids with Purple Hearts on them, mocking Mr. Kerry's war wounds and medals, have been such a hit with conventioneers, and why senior politicians are attracted to wild conspiracy theories about Mr. Soros.
It's also why Mr. Hastert, who knows how little the Bush administration has done to protect New York and help it rebuild, has accused the city of an "unseemly scramble" for cash after 9/11. Nothing makes you hate people as much as knowing in your heart that you are in the wrong and they are in the right.
But the vitriol also reflects the fact that many of the people at that convention, for all their flag-waving, hate America. They want a controlled, monolithic society; they fear and loathe our nation's freedom, diversity and complexity.
The convention opened with an invocation by Sheri Dew, a Mormon publisher and activist. Early rumors were that the invocation would be given by Jerry Falwell, who suggested just after 9/11 that the attack was God's punishment for the activities of the A.C.L.U. and People for the American Way, among others. But Ms. Dew is no more moderate: earlier this year she likened opposition to gay marriage to opposition to Hitler.
The party made sure to put social moderates like Rudy Giuliani in front of the cameras. But in private events, the story was different. For example, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas told Republicans that we are in a "culture war" and urged a reduction in the separation of church and state.
Mr. Bush, it's now clear, intends to run a campaign based on fear. And for me, at least, it's working: thinking about what these people will do if they solidify their grip on power makes me very, very afraid.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/03/opinion/03krugman.html
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Posted by Edmund Evans:
Re: Gay McCarthyism - "Feel the (Heterophobic) Hate"
September 15, 2004
Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Op-Ed Editorial Desk
Re: Gay McCarthyism - "Feel the (Heterophobic) Hate"
This may seem like water over the dam now that the Republican convention is old news, but IMO, the principles involved have a long shelf life, and are worth considering.
While Googling around the web recently, I stumbled across your Sept. 3 Op-Ed piece on the Republican convention, “Feel the Hate.” I’m not interested in getting into a discussion of what was said about Senator Kerry. But I would like to talk about why Sheri Dew should not have been included in the list of speakers you accused of hate speech. More importantly, I’d like to use this as a case study of the McCarthyesque tactics employed by the gay press.
Gay McCarthyism - “If you disagree with me, you are a gay-basher.”
Here’s the part of “Feel the Hate” that caught my attention. “The convention opened with an invocation by Sheri Dew, a Mormon publisher and activist... Ms. Dew is no more moderate: earlier this year she likened opposition to gay marriage to opposition to Hitler,” (referring to a speech given on February 28 at the Family Action Council International’s Interfaith Conference on Defending Marriage and the Family).
After taking time to read her remarks, I concluded that Dew has been unjustly bashed by the gay press, specifically the Human Rights Campaign, in a fashion that would make even the late Senator Joe McCarthy spin in his grave.
Dew used a 1941 quote from Saturday Evening Post journalist Dorothy Thompson (who the gay movement claims as one of their own): “Before this epic is over, every living human being will have chosen. Every living human being will have lined up with Hitler or against him. Every living human being either will have opposed this onslaught or supported it, for if he tries to make no choice that in itself will be a choice. If he takes no side, he is on Hitler’s side. If he does not act, that is an act—for Hitler.” Dew then rephrased Thompson’s words substituting “the family” for “Hitler”. The gay press, however, would have you believe she replaced “Hitler” with “gay marriage”, which if you had bothered to check your facts, you would have discovered she clearly did not do.
In her speech, in which she referred to gays only once, Dew used three current events as examples of threats to the family. First, Kobe Bryant’s widely publicized extramarital affairs as examples of heterosexual immorality. Second, a news article which mentioned adoption of children within gay marriage. And third, her experience as a White House delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. In relation to adoption of children by gay couples, her primary concern appeared to be whether children adopted by gays will have functional male and female role models, NOT the equating of gays with Hitler’s genocide. Basically, “In [her] speech about several threats to family life, she compared Americans who fail to defend the family with indifferent Germans who failed to oppose Hitler's rise to power.” (Robert Knight, WorldNetDaily.com)
The [gay] boy who cried wolf
Mr. Krugman, you have been seriously misled by the inaccurate, dishonest spin the HRC put on Ms. Dew’s remarks. Don’t you think it is hypocritical when the gay press drags someone through the sewer for simply exercising their first amendment rights to disagree with them in a public forum?
(BTW, isn’t it ironic that when Dew, in her invocation, asked for peace and “freedom from acrimony,” she was attacked and labeled as a hate monger?)
By utilizing unethical McCarthy smear tactics, the HRC and other gay organizations run the risk of falling into the same trap as the fabled boy who found that yelling “wolf” was a good way to get attention. Fair minded people will eventually weary of being jerked around by false alarms, and when a real wolf is out there attacking GLBTs, no one will be listening. Perhaps what the Bard said applies to the gay press as well: “The lady doth protest too much...”
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Ted Evans, Jr.
Salt Lake City, Utah
LINKS:
Feel the Hate By PAUL KRUGMAN (NYT) Op-Ed EDITORIAL DESK | September 3, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/03/opinion/03krugman.html
Invocation by Sheri Dew, at the 2004 Republican National Convention on Monday, August 30, 2004
http://news.findlaw.com/prnewswire/20040831/31aug2004134955.html
Sheri Dew’s speech “Defenders of the Faith” on February 28, 2004 at the Family Action Council International’s Interfaith Conference on Defending Marriage and the Family.
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-religion/1095244/posts
GAY LEADERS CALL ON PRESIDENT TO REJECT INFLAMMATORY SPEAKERS - Anti-gay speakers should not be featured at convention, say Jacques and Robinson
http://www.hrc.org/Template.cfm?Section=Employment_Non-Discrimination_Act&CONTENTID=22445&TEMPLATE=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm
If all else fails, silence them! September 1, 2004 By Robert Knight ©2004 WorldNetDaily.com
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40244
FYI, one of the gay adoptive parents referred to in Dew’s speech was blogged as being a Mormon.
http://www.lathefamily.org/warren3/equalitymap/archives/001050.shtml
The entry for Dorothy Thompson from Lesbian Britannica:
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:37zmbRuDvQoJ:www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/1769/nl2f.html+%22Dorothy+thompson%22+lesbian&hl=en
Ted Evans, Jr.
