Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (video: Hardball with Chris Matthews)
Amid the onslaught of articles and opinions spawned by the opening of Congressional hearings on eliminating the US military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy this morning, there were a few gems.
The nation’s highest ranking uniformed officer, Joint Chief Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen, said:
“No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. … For me, it comes down to integrity – theirs as individuals and ours as an institution.”
Elsewhere, a representative of the extremist Family Research Council, Peter Sprigg, called for gay and lesbian people to be outlawed. The exchange on Hardball with Chris Matthews, captured by David Dayen at FireDogLake, went like this:
MATTHEWS: Do you think we should outlaw gay behavior?
SPRIGG: Well, I think certainly-
MATTHEWS: I’m just asking you, should we outlaw gay behavior?
SPRIGG: I think that the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned the sodomy laws in this country, was wrongly decided. I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.
MATTHEWS: So we should outlaw gay behavior.
SPRIGG: Yes.
Sprigg trotted out every lie and debunked radical religious reich talking point about the military’s DADT policy before MSNBC’s Chris Matthews finally got him to stop bearing false witness and tell the truth about what the American Taliban have in mind for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender American citizens: criminalization and imprisonment, if not execution, punishments along the lines of the exterminate-the-gays bill they surreptitiously backed in Uganda, that is until they got nailed by progressive bloggers and Rachel Maddow.
This would be less worrisome, were this sudden spate of honesty not beginning to look like a dangerous and genuinely threatening trend. On Sunday, via Joe. My. God., we learned that “American Family Association radio host Bryan Fischer has called for sending homosexuals to prison for forced reparative therapy, a move he says is sanctioned by the Bible:”
It might be worth noting that what I actually suggested is that we impose the same sanctions on those who engage in homosexual behavior as we do on those who engage in intravenous drug abuse, since both pose the same kind of risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. I’d be curious to know what you think should be done with IV drug abusers, because whatever it is, I think the same response should be made to those who engage in homosexual behavior.
If you believe that what drug abusers need is to go into an effective detox program, then we should likewise put active homosexuals through an effective reparative therapy program. Secondly, I’m afraid you’re simply wrong about the Bible’s perspective on the law and homosexuality. Paul lists quite explicitly in 1 Timothy 1:8-11 the actions and behaviors that are the proper concern of the law …
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The bottom line here is that, biblically, those “who practice homosexuality” should come under the purview of the law just as much as those who take people captive in order to sell them into slavery. You express a belief in the Scriptures, and I trust your confidence in Scripture is not selective. If you believe all Scripture is inspired, then you are compelled to accept that legal sanctions may appropriately be applied to those who engage in homosexual behavior.
If these vile expressions of hatred and bigotry exemplify what these pseudo-Christians call religious liberties — the liberties threatened, it seems, by the mere existence of unrepentant LGBT Americans asking for nothing more than to be treated as first class citizens — then it’s time restrictions were imposed to protect the religious liberties of those who disagree with these abhorrent extremists.
(tip: Evan Hurst, Truth Wins Out)
Comments
4 Comments so far. Comments are closed.If they’re citing health reasons, then I guess lesbians will be exempt from being sent off to the gaylag.
What they’re citing is, unsurprisingly, the same arguments racists made prior to the desegregation of America’s armed forces. Sprigg and Fischer leapt ahead of the ChristoFascist’s standard talking points into ‘tell us what you really think’ territory.
So, where is the advocacy for stoning for adultery? One could re-interpret biblical writings that since this was recorded (sanctioned?) in the Bible, it is ok to do to a woman- and a man. Ah, but there is that pesky little thing called “foregivenes.” And, lets not let Paul’s letter to the Colossians preaching love get in the way either. Nope, let’s practice the hate from which Jesus came to lift this world. I wish more talking heads, who have evidently not read the Bible, would cram down the throats of these wingnuts, the passages of Jesus’ love and let them squirm on camera trying to reconcile their message of hate with the literal writings of love in the Bible. THAT would make for more interesting viewing, not to mention more informed discourse.
Just a point. There are no ‘pseudo-Christians’, just Christians. Religious belief is religious belief and there are no realistic standards that can differentiate between one sort of believer and another within any religion (or really between religions in the end). The mild mannered believers are as one with the extremists, whether they like to admit that or not.