Richard Thompson of the Thomas More Law Center, who did such a terrible job with the defense of the school board in the Dover case, was on David Barton’s radio show this week and predictably made some idiotic and bigoted statements. Like gay rights is going to “disintegrate” America.
It is clear that there is this culture war going on. We are at the tipping point now, we are seeing an attack on the Judeo-Christian principles, whether it’s the homosexual agenda that’s coming down, where they just eliminated the whole Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy that prevented open homosexuality in the military, whether there’s now attack [sic] on pro-life organizations because they are supporting pro-life stands and they are not going to get any funding from the government on certain social things that these organizations do like adoptions, like assisting women who have been abused. So you see this full court press against Christianity and its time for Christians to stands up and speak out. Even though a vast majority of Americans are Christen it is the people who hold the strings of power, whether it’s the mainstream media, or whether it’s the cultural elite, or whether its academia, they are waging a war against Christianity and Christians can’t stand by and be silent. We have to speak out.
I know you praise the Thomas More Law Center but I want to turn around and praise WallBuilders because you are giving the kind of information that people have to have to understand what is going on, to understand the history of our nation. They’re not teaching history anymore to show American exceptionalism, and I believe in American exceptionalism, we are the shining city on the hill, and if we don’t keep faith with our Founding Fathers, faith with the Judeo-Christian heritage and moral values that we have, America will disintegrate like every other huge power that existed in history.
Funny, other countries that have much stronger protections for equal rights for LGBT people seem to be doing just fine. The only thing “exceptional” about America in this regard is the power of the religious right to prevent full equality here.
37 comments
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Tabby Lavalamp
May 11, 2012 at 2:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And they are bound and determined that that shining city on the hill is to be a warning beacon.
Raging Bee
May 11, 2012 at 2:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yeah, the sectarian bigots have to do everything they can do to disintegrate America, so the gay people won’t have the power to disintegrate America.
Reginald Selkirk
May 11, 2012 at 2:43 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Those darn animal husbandry experts refuse to accept that you can breed animals with stripes by putting sticks near their watering trough.”
Reginald Selkirk
May 11, 2012 at 2:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Judeo-Christian heritage … that reminds me – the first Christians did a shit job of keeping the “faith of their fathers.”
jaketoadie
May 11, 2012 at 2:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Even though a vast majority of Americans are Christen”
You know, I don’t claim to speak for the majority of people, being from Salt Lake where we have only a small fraction of the total population of the US, but I don’t know a single person named Christen. I know a few Kristin’s and I think 1 Christine, but no Christen.
Is this name hugely popular in other states and I’m just not aware of it?
AndrewD
May 11, 2012 at 3:01 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Whilst the physical disintegration of the North American continent would be disastrous; much of the rest of the world may believe the (peaceful) disintegration of the USA could be a very good thing. It would be well worth considering
reasonbeing
May 11, 2012 at 3:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Someone needs to explain to me how equality for all is going to destroy America. I truly do not understand how anyone can buy that argument–it is utter nonsense. The various issues surrounding homosexuals are nothing more than unabashed bigotry. I have yet to hear one example of how homosexuality truly harms society. Probably because it doesn’t….
Gregory in Seattle
May 11, 2012 at 3:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Just like the end of slavery did. And racial equality. And giving women the right to vote.
Chiroptera
May 11, 2012 at 3:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
They’re not teaching history anymore to show American exceptionalism….
Well, that might be because a lot of the things that “America” is exceptional at aren’t exactly things we’d like to brag about.
Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven
May 11, 2012 at 3:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Something tells us society will make its saving throw just fine.
Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven
May 11, 2012 at 3:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Don’t forget discontinuing the use of whale oil.
d cwilson
May 11, 2012 at 3:38 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well good. We’d be a much better country if we taught kids to actually solve problems rather than just assume America is great due to some magical covenant with an invisible man in the sky.
Synfandel
May 11, 2012 at 3:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m okay with gays and lesbians, but left handed people will be the ruin of our society. Giving them the right to write with their left hands is an insult to the institution of writing and diminishes the dignity of all writing and writers. It’s unnatural and against God’s will. As God said unto the Hematite scribes in Jebediah 12:3.14, “Record thee not My words with thy left hand, for it is an abomination unto My sight.” Nuff said.
Doug Little
May 11, 2012 at 3:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well to be fair not just Christianity but any supernatural belief system.
beezlebubby
May 11, 2012 at 3:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Obviously not to be confused with the AWESOME Richard Thompson, extraordinary songwriter and guitarist.
This other Richard Thompson should be referred to as Dick Thompson, in my opinion, just to avoid confusion. The dissolution of America into 4 or 5 smaller nations would be great. New York and New England should form one big gay-friendly nation-state, with equality for all.
Doug Little
May 11, 2012 at 3:50 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Damn straight, I am one of those. I especially like the definition of Sinister in the dictonary.
Evil I tell you Evvviilll.
Doug Little
May 11, 2012 at 3:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oops. dictionary.
patricksimons
May 11, 2012 at 4:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The arguments being advanced by conservatives about gay marriage are virtually identical to the arguments conservatives used a century ago to deny women the vote.
Phillip IV
May 11, 2012 at 4:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And that sort of thing is only acceptable if you do it to Planned Parenthood the other way round, of course…
dave
May 11, 2012 at 4:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh sure, you would never get Yankees fans and Red Sox fans to agree on anything.
harold
May 11, 2012 at 4:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Actually, the reference was to all people who support full equal rights for gay people.
Therefore, it is incorrect. There are people who are Christian, and/or who are not, but are also not “waging a war against Christianity”, who support full equal rights for gay people.
It is certainly true that almost all opposition to equal rights for gay people is expressed in the form of ostentatious, obnoxious religious authoritarianism (whether that is the true motivation or merely a mask for deeper issues). Anyone who supports basic rights for gay people is therefore in conflict with the authoritarian religious right.
However, that is not quite the same thing as “waging a war against Christianity”.
Synfandel
May 11, 2012 at 4:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
We might even consider your application to become a province of Canada to help offset the Republican North influence in Alberta. Maybe even an NHL conference.
harold
May 11, 2012 at 4:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If secession were not so problematic, I would support secession of New York, New England, the West Coast, certain midwestern states, and plausibly a number of the mountain and desert states (New Mexico, Nevada, probably Colorado, and likely Montana might well choose to be part of “Northern Secession”).
Then the Red States could finally have a government that was “conservative enough” and set up a brutal authoritarian pseudo-Christian theocracy, with extremely self-destructive right wing economic policy.
However, there are a number of problems with such a scenario, beyond the mere impracticability. First of all, there are millions of decent and/or disadvantaged people in right wing states, who would be thrown to the wolves. The new Mean Jesus States of America would instantly abandon even what environmental regulations they grudgingly follow, and severely foul the common global environment. And making sure that they didn’t have or develop nuclear weapons, which they would almost certainly use (more likely against perceived weak target poor nations in the middle east or similar regions than against the Union, at least at first), would be a major issue.
It is frustrating, though, that most of the states of the former Confederacy have a political culture of reactionary backlash and petulant, unjustified resentment toward the rest of us.
This comment is not intended to be hostile to individual Southerners. Nor is it intended to deny the incredible cultural contributions of the South. But it just is the case that if those right wing voting block states, essentially all of which, incidentally, receive “socialist” federal tax redistribution from the rest of us, did not hand up all their votes to right wing Republicans over and over again with rare partial exceptions when a conservative white Southern Democrat runs, we would be better off.
Chiroptera
May 11, 2012 at 4:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
harold, #23: Nor is it intended to deny the incredible cultural contributions of the South.
Deep fried everything with a side of ranch dressing?
Michael Heath
May 11, 2012 at 4:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
AndrewD writes:
It’s not worth considering at all; that would be horrendous. Unless of course our Christianists had complete power and then you’d have a point.
An arguable rebuttal to my conclusion is that we are the primary obstacle to mitigating the threat from climate change. [Where I know full well how China is acting and argue to the key to their reversal requires going through D.C.]. But we’re at the point any successful mitigation will require a disproportionate share be financed by the U.S., which requires our non-distintegration.
harold
May 11, 2012 at 4:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As a dual US/Canadian citizen who spent a lot of my childhood in Nova Scotia, I will note that the big difference between the US and Canada is that Canada does not have the hostile legacy of a Civil war and does not have a region similar to the American Southeast.
Canada has an east coast, a central part around the Great Lakes that used to be industrial, an agricultural prairies/great plains region, a mountain west with politics not dissimilar to US mountain west politics, and a west coast. It doesn’t have a lot of desert or a border with Mexico, but the big thing it doesn’t have is a culturally distinct area that fought a civil war over slavery, and has resisted most progressive and humane changes ever since then.
Michael Heath
May 11, 2012 at 5:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
reasonbeing writes:
Conservative [political] Christians believe that like the Israel of old, the U.S. currently enjoys favored-nation status with God, risked of course by our electing a black for president. Not persecuting gays like Joshua treated the Canaanites (hyperbole) risks God removing his veil of protection, especially since the president is black. Pointing to other countries’ success in spite of equal rights for gays is deflected, badly, by arguing we’re God’s special nation; so we uniquely expose ourselves to being hurt by those other countries similar to how evil Babylon and Rome did to God’s chosen people. I don’t know how conservative Christians respond to Israel protecting some of their gays’ rights, I’m sure someone has conjured up the “truth” that fits in their delusional perception of reality.
reasonbeing writes:
D. C. Sessions
May 11, 2012 at 5:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Consider the catastrophe of the early 1860s. And that was about a whole lot less than full equality, and was about far less then “all.”
Larry
May 11, 2012 at 6:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Darn tootin’! Them lefties chose to be different and to use their hands in such an unnatural and ungodly way. Its a choice, people, and we starboard-siders shouldn’t have to put up with such deviants.
Remember. If god had meant for us to use our left hands, he wouldn’t have invented scissors.
Randomfactor
May 11, 2012 at 9:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Marriage equality will disintegrate those religious blocs who falsely predict disaster if same-sex couples are allowed to marry. That’s close enough to Thompson’s picture of “his” America.
And good riddance, too.
dingojack
May 11, 2012 at 11:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“New York and New England should form one big gay-friendly nation-state, with equality for all”.
You could call this new state ‘The Dominion of New England‘!
(It’s never been tried before).
:) Dingo
Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven
May 12, 2012 at 12:17 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Worse than that. As I recall the Midwestern states were, in many cases, staunchly anti-slavery and contributed many of the best-regarded Union regiments during the Civil War.
Not only has America failed to bring civilization to the South, they’ve been silently infiltrating us, and quite successfully.
Rip Steakface
May 12, 2012 at 12:55 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
How about popular music for the last 80 or so years? Jazz and blues were invented in New Orleans. Rock is from Tennessee. Country is the preferred music of the South. The only popular genres *not* from the South are pop and hip-hop, and each are simply derivatives of jazz and blues (similarly to rock) – blues in particular (since jazz is a much broader subject… I would call Epitaph by Charles Mingus exactly bluesy).
/defender of some Southern music*
*because fuck country
dingojack
May 12, 2012 at 1:24 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh Rip – don’t forget Punk* and Grunge, both born in that well-known southern city of Seattle, Washtington (perhaps you’ve visted or live there). :)
Dingo
—–
* or perhaps New York? In any case in metastasised rapidly, reaching even sleepy Brisbane Queensland.
chuckonpiggott
May 12, 2012 at 8:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
My late twin brother and I are both southpaws. If you ever saw our handwriting you’d think we possessed, and I’m 59, from the days when they taught penmanship.
gvlgeologist
May 13, 2012 at 12:16 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ Chiroptera and Rip Steakface:
OK, as a transplanted northerner and west-coaster, I can see having to move from Florida back north if the south and north break up.
As long as the south agrees to export boiled peanuts, grits, gumbo and jambalaya ingredients. THAT, I’ll go to war over.
Maybe not the grits.
brucecoppola
May 14, 2012 at 9:33 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
And Richard Thompson is a case in point. Before joining the TMLC, he was the Oakland County (MI) prosecutor. Oakland County is not a rural backwater either; it is an affluent suburban Detroit county with income and education levels well above the national average. The outlying areas are still pretty rural and small town, however. It is also historically Republican and has moved rightward with the party as a whole.