I wish this Elmer Gantry would just go away.  Forever.

I'm excited to see that social conservative Republicans have taken the cue to pit blacks against gays and gays against blacks.  That should only solidify Democratic gains and eventually sew any rips in the big tent that have formed in the last two weeks.  

Yay Mike Huckabee, that fearless but God-fearing bigot!

So this is the criterion for the worthiness of a social justice: whether someone is injured during the pursuit of the cause?

Well said, Seyward.

Well, it's also true that polygamists have been assaulted and murdered.

Then again, gay people have never been enslaved.

So surely there are legitimate grounds on which a person could differentiate between the black and the gay civil rights movements. The Huckster sure didn't articulate such grounds, but the criticism of him is also guilty of reductive glibness.

But I'll stop channelling fellow commenter liberalreformer now and get back to suffering my Huckabee man-crush in silence.

Wow! This guy is a (Christian) preacher?  It's really strange the way evangelicals and fundamentalists have little use for the Jesus (except to dintinguish themselves from Jews) and the ethos of New Testament.

Well, I guess gays can apply a market solution and participate in a grand, collective act of self immolation. They could subject themselves to a perverse form of durability testing, such as compaines use measure life wear of mechanical implements or products such as mattresses.

Since, Bush is still in office--he's just the man for the job--he can order the DoJ to round up scores of thousands of  homosexuals and rendition them to Gitmo. At Gitmo, anti-gay activists(evangelicals, Mormons, whomever) will beat, torture and lynch gays in sufficient number to equal 300 hundred years of violence.

And viola! Gays are fast-tracked to deserving civil rights.  Why didn't they think of that before?

desperjm,

Exactly.  I guess by this logic, the Christian Right movement is unworthy because all of their hurt is emotional.

Homosexuals can no doubt come up with plenty of stories of hate and discrimination employed against them.

But, the Harvey Milk murder was about a politician squeezed out of office by his own mistakes and shrewdness of his opponents.  He went beserk and murdered them, Milk being one, the mayor of San Francisco being the other.  Maybe the murdered didn't love homosexuals, either.  But, that was a sidebar to the problem.

Matthew Shepherd, no argument-- he was murdered, heinously, because he was gay.  

Huckabee's argument, as posed, is somewhat beside the point.  Blacks were subject to vast institutionalized wrongs, starting with slavery, followed by being deprived of the vote, the ability to acquire property, indentured servitude, separate schools and public facilities, and more.

Homosexuals have suffered discrimination.  But not on that scale, and all though institutionalized in discrete circumstances-- serving openly in the military, being entrusted with young boys if their homosexuality was known-- the magnitude of the discrimination was hardly equal to that suffered by blacks.

That is not to deny that homosexuals have a case.  It means they are not entitled to claim full equivalency with blacks in their grievances.  

Anymore than are white women, who while once suffering suffering some roughly equal institutionalized disadvantages-- no vote, limits in their control of property, and more-- were not suffering anywhere near to the degree of blacks during slavery and afterwards in North and South America.

And, P.S. why do we only hear about slavery in America-- a nation that fought its bloodiest war to eliminated same, yet we never hear about slavery in, say, Brazil, where it survived about 30 years longer than it did here.

dylanposer writes, "...I'm excited to see that social conservative Republicans have taken the cue to pit blacks against gays and gays against blacks."

Boy, is that a fatuous attack.

Blacks have long resented and long articulated their resentment of homosexuals claiming equivalence in the magnitude of their grievances with blacks.

Homosexuals have a right to their claims.  But blacks didn't need or get instruction from Republicans on this matter.

As to gays against blacks, that's brand new.  And it came with the fact the the black vote was instrumental in passing California's Proposition 8 in the past election.

So, please, dylanposer, quit posing such patently false arguments and accusations.

Fact is, Channy, it's the O'Reilly's of the world who are trying to spur an inter-Democratic fracture.  I'd suggest watching his show or reading his transcripts to see the kind of malarkey to which I am referring before you accuse me of inventing the issue.  

Chan:

I agree with your first post.

What burns me is the dishonesty of Huckabee. Why doesn't say he is against allowing fags and dykes the right of marriage. Period. (And he should use my words so we don't mistake how he really feels.)  If we extend Huckabee's reasoning to its logical outcome, my fast track violence-against-vast-numbers-of-gays plan should be amenable to him. But we know it wouldn't be.

For Christians, these guys don't seem to have any compunction about prevaricating to further their aims. (In violation of the Ten Admonitions.)  Huckabee's thesis remind me of the weasely tactics Right-Wing Christian groups use to try and get Intelligent Design (read: creationism) into science classes and their psuedo-historical rationale for erecting the Ten Commandments in public places. (I guess, lying is a tried and true method. The Church invented Christmas to co-opt "pagan" celebrations.)

CORRECTO:

Maybe the murderer didn't love homosexuals, either.

dylanposer writes, "...Channy, it's the O'Reilly's of the world who are trying to spur an inter-Democratic fracture.  I'd suggest watching his show or reading his transcripts to see the kind of malarkey to which I am referring before you accuse me of inventing the issue."

Dylan, I watch O'Reilly and Hannity.  I also watch Chris Matthews and a lot on MSNBC.  Except for Olbermann who is self-loving, never surprising, and not very bright.  Nor Rachel Maddow who I don't find very interesting.

I'm of the Right but I read and watch Left opinon, probably more than the Right's.

If O'Reilly is trying to pt blacks against gays or vice versa, I missed that chapter.  He could easily have said things to make you think that's his strategy.

Frankly, while O'Reilly is a bloviator and not sophisticated about a lot of things, and certainly not hip, he is bright, and in a peculiar way, ingenuous.  Sometimes by design, sometimes for real.

And, O'Reilly does bend over backwards to be even handed and to give a voice to his opponents.  Something Olbermann never does.

Channy: I don't think he  did. Wasn't the murderer a homophobe fireman?

I couldn't take Hannity nor O'Reilly.  A pair of bullies. (In my book physical cowards.)

O'Reilly, a multiple draft dodger, told Michael Moore that he wouldn't want his children to fight in Iraq. (Imagine that.) he said he'd go in their stead. Yet he didn't want to go to 'Nam, another war that he supported.

Hannity, a Reagan balls licker, and self-styled "tough guy," wasn't motivated to sign up to defend the U.S. against the Evil Empire. Strangely, I was kicking it in Cali--in uniform--while Hannity was bumming around (and I'm sure, preparing to be a self-reighteous, prig by having gnarley,Vactican-prohibited premarital and Onan-type sex) shaping his conservative views on defense, fiscal and foreign policy.  To think, only 140-150 miles away, Sean tough guy could have been part of the Tip of the Spear. As usual, he, like so many fire-breathing conservatives, had something better to do.

Channy -- I agree that it's strange the way people seem to imagine that slavery only existed in the United States.  It's very true of course that the institution lasted for longer in Brazil (and, in contrast, was outlawed earlier in the British West Indies, for example, than in the U.S.), but the major distinction made by historians, I believe, is that South American race hierarchies made slavery a more porous social condition than in the U.S.  The "one-drop" rule didn't exist in the same way there, and you could work your way out, and even marry out, of slavery and being a slave did not mean that your children and children's children were destined to be slaves also.

Thus, while dismantled earlier here than in Brazil, American slavery was a more rigid and implacably sealed institution.

I forget if the killer had ever been a fireman.  But, he was a City Councilman.  He made some sort of sucker deal for himself with Milk and the Mayor and resigned his seat.  Then had remorse for doing it and asked for his seat back, and was refused.

At that point, he went apeshit, came back to City Hall with a gun and killed Milk, the mayor, maybe some others.  

the killer (Dan White) actually actually got off easy on a "diminished capacity" basis (the infamous "Twinkie Defense") and was paroled in 1984.

Within two years, he killed himself.

It is a very sad but interesting chapter of history, and helped propel Diane Feinstein towards the Senate.  She was already on the city council and became mayor on the death of Mayor Moscone, then took it from their.

Channy:  I forgot the guy was a city councilman. But I do remember that he got off easy and committed suicide.

From the the Declaration of Indepennce:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

No where does it say that they must have the crap beat out of them first.

And if Huck's problem is with gay marriage, and its percieved threat to traditional marriage, he may want to address his states divorce rate, the 2nd highest in the nation.

Seyward -- this is post of the week.  Excellent.