Tag Archives: Hate

News

Jennifer Roback Morse explains the California lawsuit against Prop 8

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Great post by the admirable Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse on MercatorNet. (H/T RuthBlog)

Excerpt:

California’s high-profile federal lawsuit against Proposition 8, which begins in court on January 11, appears to be about creating a federal case for same sex marriage. But in fact, much more is at stake. Lurking in the shadows of this case is a breathtaking expansion of judicial interference with perfectly valid elections. Whatever your views about Proposition 8, we surely should be able to agree that special interest groups can’t go into court to overturn elections they don’t like.

Ted Olsen and David Boies want to convince the court that the alleged anti-gay bias of Proposition 8 supporters should invalidate the election. But first, they have to find some such bias. This is why Olsen and Boies sought the trial court’s permission to demand confidential campaign documents. They want free reign to rummage around through the Prop 8 campaign’s computers and filing cabinets, looking for evidence of this supposed meanness. The trial judge had ruled that Prop 8 proponents had no First Amendment privilege, and therefore had to hand over all communications among members of the campaign and their contractors.

[…]The motives of the seven million Californians who voted Yes on 8 are irrelevant. The election was about adding 14 words to the California Constitution. The entire state of California knew perfectly well what those words were. The point of the campaign was to discuss the likely impact of those words. Olsen and Boies don’t like what the voters decided. Sorry. Self-government is about abiding by the results of lawful elections, whether you like the outcome or not.

And here is an op-ed by former Attorney General Ed Meese III in the New York Times. (H/T The Corner)

Excerpt:

Most troubling, Judge Walker has also ruled that the trial will investigate the Proposition 8 sponsors’ personal beliefs regarding marriage and sexuality. No doubt, the plaintiffs will aggressively exploit this opportunity to assert that the sponsors exhibited bigotry toward homosexuals, or that religious views motivated the adoption of Proposition 8. They’ll argue that prohibiting gay marriage is akin to racial discrimination.

To top it all off, Judge Walker has determined that this case will be the first in the Ninth Circuit to allow cameras in the courtroom, with the proceedings posted on YouTube. This will expose supporters of Proposition 8 who appear in the courtroom to the type of vandalism, harassment and bullying attacks already used by some of those who oppose the proposition.

The tolerance of the secular left. I hope some of my readers who believe in marriage are going to law school – and I want straight As on your transcripts, but keep a low profile! I recommend writing under a pseudonym, because the other side will go after anything you write to discredit you. Think about it.

My previous post about the threats and violence against Prop 8 supporters. And another post explains why prop 8 supporters favor traditional marriage.

By the way, comments on this post will be strictly moderated in order to respect Obama’s hate crimes law.

Commentary

Can all opposition to secular socialist policies be dismissed as racism?

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Story from the Weekly Standard. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

For years now, those on the left have conflated resistance to any item of their agenda–high taxes, extravagant spending, laxity on crime, what have you–with motives of a dark nature: racism, nativism, fear of “the other,” and various species of “hate.”

[…]As Obama’s grandiose plans created a predictable political reaction, which first took form in the tea party movement, his sympathizers in the media theorized that racism, which had been in abeyance for the six monthsaround the election, had re-reared its mean head.

[…]Time‘s Joe Klein looked at people protesting taxes and spending, bailouts and czars, deficits in the trillions, and discerned fear of Hispanics spreading like wildfire in the white working class. “They’re seeing Latinos .  .  . move into the neighborhoods. They’re seeing South Asians .  .  . running a lot of businesses. They’re seeing intermarriage .  .  . all these things that they find threatening. .  .  . They believe that the America that they knew, which was always kind of a myth, has disappeared.”

[…]Michael Lind, writing for Salon, said… “From the beginning, attempts to create a universal welfare state in the U.S. have been thwarted by the fears of voters that they will be taxed to subsidize other Americans who are unlike them in race. .  .  . Racial resentments undoubtedly explain the use of ‘redistribution’ and ‘socialism’ as code words by John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Republican working-class mascot ‘Joe the Plumber’ during the 2008 presidential campaign.”

But the problem is that there isn’t any evidence of racism:

The most conclusive rejoinder to the contention that “socialism” is a racist code word comes from a poll taken by the Democracy Corps (the firm founded by James Carville and Paul Begala), which delivered the verdict that while tea party protesters were insane by the partisan standards of Bill Clinton’s backers, the protesters’ concerns were what they said they were–taxes and spending; the expansion of government–and were not about race. The pollsters began discussions among older, white, and conservative voters and found “race was barely raised, [and] certainly not what was bothering them.”

Is it healthy for democracy for the secular left to demonize their opponents all the time instead of listening to their arguments? Doesn’t this shurt down dialogue and prevent us from listening to a diversity of opinions and perspectives? It seems to me that the only people who ever make race an issue are people on the left. I’m really questioning whether we should be voting in close-minded leftists to run the economy when they seem to be incapable of appreciating both sides of economic questions.

It’s the economy, stupid.

Commentary

MUST-READ: Study documents harassment and threats against Prop 8 supporters

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The research publication is here, from the Heritage Foundation. (H/T ECM)

Abstract:

Supporters of Proposition 8 in California have been subjected to harassment, intimidation, vandalism, racial scapegoating, blacklisting, loss of employment, economic hardships, angry protests, violence, at least one death threat, and gross expressions of anti-religious bigotry. Arguments for same-sex marriage are based fundamentally on the idea that limiting marriage to the union of husband and wife is a form of bigotry, irrational prejudice, and even hatred against homosexual persons. As this ideology seeps into the culture more generally, individuals and institutions that support marriage as the union of husband and wife risk paying a price for that belief in many legal, social, economic, and cultural contexts.

The executive summary is here.

The PDF version is here.

You may also want to refresh yourself on how this works out in practice by watching a debate on marriage between Dennis Prager and Perez Hilton.

My previous post on this topic is here.