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The Sore Winners of the Left
The Left started the culture war, won it, and now roams the countryside shooting the wounded.
Getting same-sex marriage legalized now appears to have been just a beginning for progressives, not the goal that many libertarians and conservatives had assumed. With SSM accepted in more states every year and the Supreme Court considering if it should be a right in all 50, the Left is angrier than ever.
While most Americans would have celebrated such rapid victories, a large number of so-called liberals are out for vengeance. In Indiana, a local news reporter cold-called businesses to see if they would cater a theoretical same-sex wedding. The first one to say “no” would be made an example of.
When the journalist asked owners of a small, rural pizzeria the equivalent of ”are you now or have you ever been a member of a traditional church?” they answered honestly. So the reporter juiced up the headline by claiming the business refused to serve gays. National outlets ran with the useful lie. The rest is mob violence history.
Progressives threatened to rob Memories Pizza, kill the owners, and burn it to the ground. The terrified couple locked up the store and were too afraid to leave their home due to the threats. This pizza place had never been asked to cater a same-sex wedding — or any wedding ever. It had never refused service to anyone. The owners had never threatened physical harm against a soul.
Tumbrels rolled down Main Street anyway. Jealous at the online buzz, now CNN is calling random businesses to out the traditionally religious. The crowd must be sated. Dissent must be crushed.
All this time, I naively viewed the legalization of same-sex marriage as the goal of its proponents. Well-meaning people who wanted the same legal rights as their heterosexual brothers and sisters. How could my marriage be damaged by simply allowing another couple the same options I enjoy?
But for many activists, same-sex marriage was just a convenient tactic to achieve a much broader goal. Their real desire was to silence dissent. To drive the traditional, the conservative, and the religious underground. To destroy their businesses and threaten their lives. To ensure the minority understood there was no place for them in this nation.
I hope that one day, progressives will learn how to accept people different from themselves. But now that SSM is nearly a fait accompli, I’m wondering which wedge issue will be used next to hammer the stubborn square pegs into the round holes of post-Obama America.
Published in Culture, Law
Or what about focusing on freedom of association, as Deroy Murdock does in this piece on NRO?
You are close to allowing the other side to limit and define the language of the argument. It’s a trait of the left to couch everything in euphemism. The best example is “pro-choice” but there are hundreds of others. On this front of the culture war, their propaganda will be about “fairness” and “freedom”. Of course, this is ass-backward but it persuades some of the gullible and at least muddies the water; the last thing they need is clarity. Better to stick with “freedom of religion”, it is deeply ingrained in the minds of the unthinking that “freedom of religion” is a good thing, as well as a right, even if they’re not sure what it means.
Oh, I don’t know. Based on the recent news from Bald’s Leechbook, those early medievals might be able to fix the high cost of healthcare and knock out the superbugs all at one fell swoop. A concoction of garlic, onions, and cow bile? What’s not to like?
In some respects, perhaps it would be a step forward. And it certainly wouldn’t include gay marriage.
Echoes of Germany, circa 1938.
In Indiana, a local news reporter cold-called businesses to see if they would cater a theoretical same-sex wedding. The first one to say “no” would be made an example of.
When the journalist asked owners of a small, rural pizzeria the equivalent of ”are you now or have you ever been a member of a traditional church?” they answered honestly. So the reporter juiced up the headline by claiming the business refused to serve gays. National outlets ran with the useful lie. The rest is mob violence history.
Doesn’t this sound suspiciously like “journalists” (the quotation marks are for you, Dad) deliberately creating a controversy, riling up the wild-eyed (on both sides) so they could have something simple and stupid to report on during their 24/7 news cycle? After all, if it isn’t Gays Against Christian Pizza, it would have to be something substantive, important, complicated and booooorrring, like the Iranian nuclear negotiations… We’ve been manipulated, folks.
Re: comment#59
The reason I think you’re right is that gay couples wanting all the benefits of marriage, including a legally binding public declaration of their commitment to each other, could have gotten that without calling their unions marriage (they could have been “life partnered” or something ) and without harassing small business owners who couldn’t, in good conscience, photograph or cater their version of a wedding. (By the way, I bet a lot of liberal, mainstream Protestant churches would have loved to create a Life Partnering ceremony, since it would have been more acceptable to many of their parishioners.) The current mess actually does seem to be the result of people—who are volatile due to inner conflicts related to sexual and emotional desires, identity and choices, and who often seem to have a bipolar-like need for attention, and few other ways of getting the attention they crave—being used by people attacking religious freedom in order to gain more control over civil society.
Nobody here is dumb enough not to know that. But the fact that you can gin up a raging mob to destroy somebody for believing marriage is between a man and a woman really ought to disturb anyone. Suggesting there’s a moral equivalence between the two “wild-eyed” sides is repugnant.
Amen. Some here are drawing a false dichotomy between “the Left” and “gay rights,” as if there were some conservative or libertarian way to implement gay rights. There is not. Gay rights are inherently Leftist.
But gay rights are not the root of the problem we are currently facing with marriage and religious liberty.
Jon:
As has been intimated within this thread of responses is also in your headline, its about the real intent of the left. The true socialist/leftist can’t create ‘utopia’ without the dissolution of closely held liberties and values so they need to break these down socially so they can control them completely, one by one.
The biggest American social construct is religious freedom, so this is the largest ‘rock’ to break but they ‘believe’ they WILL break it! (Try the mayor of Houston demanding transcripts of the targeted churches she disagreed with. It may have been a bridge too far, but it was a test trial balloon, see how far you can push, always push.)
So you can’t have a true social utopia unless you silence your opponents. Won’t happen this year, or next, but if you take the left’s ‘long view’ it can seem possible to accomplish in say 20 years? Maybe less if we can create more ‘outrage’ about those pesky Christians. They don’t really care about Muslims because they are a small percentage of the population, but they can use them against Christian so they can be ‘useful’ non the less.
A virtual mob is pretty scary when it includes death threats and threats to burn down the business.
Wild eyed with destructive anger is not the same as wild eyed with fear.
It does not bother you that people are justifiably terrified to have it made public they think marriage is between a man and a woman? I like your idea to volunteer an army of pizza eaters, but it really should not take courage to eat or bake pizza while Christian.
If a virtual mob threatened death or fire to a business because the owners were gay you would not be so dismissive.
I’m not being dismissive—not even slightly. I just don’t want to get dragged into the media’s circus.
And having absolutely everyone show up and eat pizza (and promise to do so for however long it takes for the owners to feel safe) is exactly what local folk, religious or otherwise, should do. (Come to think of it, maybe I’ll e-mail the UU church closest to that pizza parlor and suggest it?)
HAVING SAID THAT—I just read about the mayor in Texas who wants to subpoena the sermons of local ministers to see if they said anything bad about her or about homosexuality… and now I’m feeling a little wild-eyed myself.
Wondering whether I could come up with a non-violent protest along the lines of sending her every single sermon I’ve ever written, with HOMOSEXUALITY inserted randomly in the text?
I thought you weren’t allowed to shout “Pizza” in the kabuki theater.
Not just any mayor, but the Mayor of Houston, the fourth most populous city in the nation.
I am sure you haven’t said anything that would raise her ire though.
I do like your outside-the-box solutions and let me be the first to egg you on in contacting the nearest UU church.
I started to type out-of-the-box and then realized that means the exact opposite of outside-the-box, isn’t that funny. Much like colored people and people of color, tooootally different.
I might have. You never know—she sounds like a pretty ireful person. (I was going to say Ire-ish and thought better of it).
On the other hand—sadly—the whole thing happened six months ago, so I missed my chance. I’m sure there will be another, however, folk being what folk is. And, if nothing else, I am slightly more clued-in as to why the anxiety about the Indiana law and the Pizza Parlor is so strong. Shoulda figured y’all weren’t just paranoid.
Mea culpa, JoJo, in other words.
And: Already e-mailed all the Indiana churches!
You go, girl! Interested to hear the response. Let me know where I can send a check for a pie!
Speaking of which, I hear there’s a pretty successful online fundraiser for the pizza family. But nobody at, say, Apple, will dare to contribute no matter how much they might like to.
Apple is too busy opening up stores in places where they stone gays.
Not too busy to fire their own employees who support traditional marriage, though. They can do both.
The story just got weirder.
1/2 of the social media team of a CBS affiliate in Virginia decided that she would file a fraud complaint with the GoFundMe site against Memories Pizza. (H/t Gateway Pundit)
Practicing “journalism” with callous disregard.
You can’t make this up – what Iran deal?
Amazing thread. I take one powerful point away from Jon’s post: No more compromise. Aldous Huxley gave away the game early for those of a mind to live for self and self alone. From Ends and Means:
“The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotical revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever.”
As others have said, the agenda is simple – just keep pushing the edge of acceptable ever further and then demonize anyone that deigns to suggest that doing so is morally wrong. Who are we to judge?
I know this is a “big tent” and a reasonable community with believers, unbelievers and likely a bunch in between, however, these culture wars are merely the completely expected consequence of losing our mooring of faith. Faith in an all powerful God, who commands obedience to certain moral laws, and establishes consequence for failing to adhere to those laws. Those consequences extend beyond the individual and into the societies we live in. Lack of belief in God, His law, and the consequenses does not mean they don’t exist. The apostle Paul says it best, “Every knee will bow.”
In short, it is time to punch back, really hard, with moral authority. In order to do so, we gotta have some moral absolutes.
Re: comment# 82
I get the feeling that she’ll never forgive the family who owns Memories Pizza for being the mirror in which she briefly saw herself as fanatical and freedom hating. You’d think they had damaged her self esteem on purpose.
Re : comment # 83
Aldous Huxley’s Ends and Means ? I have to read it. I’m thinking you’re right, by the way.
I don’t know who said this first, but…
If you don’t care about the cause de jour, don’t fret. You’ll be made to care.
…
And then when you care but not enough to do something, you’ll be forced to do it.
I’m almost certain that this will be followed by being forced to say that you like it.
By the way, this is a little off topic-please forgive, but where have all the libertarians gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
This sounds so much like a C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength coming to life.
I keep thinking of that first Apple commercial, with the woman running in to the Big Brother rally of state control and smashing the screen. I guess things have changed for them.