I hate to get all culture-war on you, but when liberty is at stake I don’t see a way around it. The title of this George Neumayr piece, “Enemies of the State” says it all. Who are these enemies? Why, of course those bigots who resist, in spite of all the progress we’ve made to become a tolerant people, “marriage equality.” We cannot tolerate them!
Many have argued, as I have, that the drive to re-define marriage has little to do with the actual concept of marriage; its primary goal is to legitimize homosexuality and delegitimize traditional sexual morality. And the best way to delegitimize something is to stigmatize it. We can see how this plays out in a higher education environment, not surprising, in Maryland, where there is a proposal on the ballot in November to legalize the redefinition of marriage.
The irony is that the person who has incurred the wrath of the politically correct is the “chief diversity officer” at Gallaudet University. Of course we know that in academia, diversity has nothing to do with diversity of thought; modern higher education is as lock-step as the old Soviet Union. Neumayr explains:
Proponents of gay marriage often defend the innovation on the grounds that it won’t affect anyone save the parties to it. Opponents counter this rosy claim by pointing to its dire implications for religious freedom and parental rights. Where gay marriage exists, they argue, those freedoms quickly disappear.
Once homosexuality enjoys the highest approval of the state through the stamp of marriage, no one who wishes to remain in public life can oppose it.
A shadow of this future fell on Angela McCaskill recently. She is the “chief diversity officer” at Gallaudet, a university in Washington, D.C., that serves the deaf. Last week, the president of the school put her on “leave” for committing the high offense of signing a petition that put the question of gay marriage up for a vote in Maryland. An agent of the school’s tolerance police, a lesbian professor, had scoured the list (obtained and publicized by a gay newspaper) and found McCaskill’s name on it.
Ironically McCaskill simply thought Maryland’s citizens should be able to in their rights as free citizens determine the issue:
At a press conference, McCaskill said that she signed the petition simply because she wanted the people to decide the question: “I thought it was important that as a citizen of the state of Maryland I could exercise my right to participate in the political process. I am pro-democracy.”
But to school officials the mere presence of her name on the list called for Soviet-style reeducation and apology notes. To sign such an initiative is “inappropriate,” huffed Gallaudet President T. Alan Hurwitz. He demanded that she confess her wrongdoing. She refused, so he put her on leave and found an interim replacement.
So let me get this straight: It is inappropriate to let the people of the state of Maryland decide whether something as consequential as marriage should be completely re-defined from what it has been for literally thousands of years? And we call these people “liberal”? Of course this is perfectly logical to modern liberals, who are considerably illiberal. If you believe in traditional, i.e. religious sexual morality, you are a bigot, and hate informs your views.
This is not about rights. Religious folks have no interest in people’s personal sexual lives, whatever the orientation. Most devout American religious believers have zero desire to determine how other people live their personal lives. Yet that is not enough for the modern liberal. Everyone must agree with them in every detail, or the thought police will have their hide. Or at least their job.
“Most devout American religious believers have zero desire to determine how other people live their personal lives.”
Really?
When did that start?
So “most devout American religious believers” don’t care if women have legal access to abortion? If two men are allowed to marry? If a man and a woman are permitted to engage in sex before marriage? If contraception is available to teenagers without parental consent? So they won’t vote against allowing other people to have those rights because they “have zero desire to determine how other people live their personal lives”?
Yeah, right.
I cringe when I hear things like the McCaskill incident, and other excesses of intolerant “liberalism,” as the author puts it, but let’s not pretend that there isn’t a whole political agenda in place that panders to the intolerance of many “religious believers,” and does in fact promise to “interfere with other people’s lives.” (I’ll leave aside definitions of what constitutes “devout” for now — it seems a meaningless, weighted, endlessly subjective qualifier, right up there with “real” American).
Those who scream loudest about getting “the government off our backs” don’t seem to mind having the same government interfere with the personal lives of gays, women, the poor and numerous other groups.
As anyone who dares to flip from one news channel to another can plainly see, there is intolerance and hypocrisy on both sides of the political divide in this country, especially among fundamentalist extremists, be they of the left or the right. To pretend otherwise, or to pretend that it’s the exclusive domain of one side or another, is simply disingenuous; itself an example of hypocrisy.