As a general rule, I don't get a lot of comments on this blog. Certainly compared to some of the bigger named bloggers, my blog is a relatively comment free zone. I'm actually fine with that, since it saves me a lot of the hassle of comment moderation and dealing with comment spam. But I do sometimes wonder whether that means that I'm sort of shouting into the abyss here.
Every so often, however, someone decides to come along and leave a remark or two in a comment thread. Often, these remarks are insightful, or at least provocative. Yesterday's post on Chick-fil-A and bigotry actually provoked a couple of responses that I thought were worth addressing. First, from "Ben," who writes:
I occupy the apparently uncommon position of not really caring one way or the other on gay marriage. I don't think it's a right per se nor do I think it's a moral travesty should two men or two women decide to be married. I really just don't care. What I DO care about is Rahm Emmanuel and city aldermen using their authority to punish unsanctioned political speech. I DO care about otherwise rational Americans wishing death upon millions of their countrymen over a position that the POTUS himself held until three months ago. Apparently in the span of a couple of years every person in America is expected to completely reevaluate a definition of marriage that was understood for centuries and anyone failing to "evolve" (to quote the president)according to the officially sanctioned timeline DESERVES TO DIE!!! Not exaggerating here; DESERVES TO DIE - that is the exact sentiment articulated by more than a dozen facebook friends as well as any number of public figures.
Now, first of all, I have no doubt that someone, somewhere has used expressions like "so-and-so deserves to die" as a form of hyperbole to express anger or frustration over someone's position. And maybel someone somwhere said that about Dan Cathy. Maybe even a dozen of "Ben"'s Facebook friends have done so. I have no way of knowing, and I'm certainly not going to attempt draw some general conclusions about what liberals or progressive think because of what Ben tells me he's seen on Facebook.
But, that wasn't quite the end of it, because after I went a couple of rounds with Ben, pointing out that, even if you could point to a few instances of hyperbole of the kind he notes against Dan Cathy, there are, by contrast, quite a few people floating around out there who are actually interested in bringing about the deaths of LGBT folks. This brought "Chris" into the discussion. Chris writes:
You had said: "Indeed, I think that rhetoric is FAR more common on the right than it is on the left (and in some cases, it's not just rhetoric, as there are those who would be happy to make the death penalty for homosexual sex mandatory under U.S. law)." This is hyperbole meant to incite and it's just plain dumb. Name one figure, public or private or on any Facebook account (other than Fred what's-his-name at Westboro Baptist) that is calling for the death penalty for homosexual sex. If these sentiments are "far more common on the right" as you suggest then prove it. You must have something other than anecdotal evidence don't you, since that is all that is valid? God save us from the associate professors of the world.
So, a couple of things here: First of all, I don't think I was making anything more than a general statement about the incidence of a particular kind of rhetoric, and point out that it's more common on one side than the other. From that perspective, I don't think that I need much more than a few anecdotes to make the point. But nevertheless, Chris seems to be unaware of a lot of what goes on rhetorically on the political right in the United States, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to clarify a number of points.
First, if it's merely a question of anti-gay rhetoric, there is a lot of evidence of that kind of rhetoric taking place on the political right, and a lot of evidence that this rhetoric frequently becomes violent. Chris may not be aware of the incidence of anti-gay hate crimes, but there were over 1,000 reported incidents in 2007. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center:
The figures show that homosexuals are 2.4 times more likely to suffer a violent hate crime attack than Jews (8.3 divided by 3.5). In the same way, gays are 2.6 times more likely to be attacked than blacks; 4.4 times more likely than Muslims; 13.8 times more likely than Latinos; and 41.5 times more likely than whites, according to the FBI figures. The basic pattern holds by years as well as across the years.
The bottom line: Homosexuals are far more likely than any other minority group in the United States to be victimized by violent hate crime.
What's more, in terms of the access of anti-gay bigots to positions of power, the Republican party has been flirting with characters who expressly advocate the deaths of gays and lesbians for years. To take but two examples. First:
[Ron] Paul’s Iowa chair, Drew Ivers, recently touted the endorsement of Rev. Phillip G. Kayser, a pastor at the Dominion Covenant Church in Nebraska who also draws members from Iowa, putting out a press release praising “the enlightening statements he makes on how Ron Paul’s approach to government is consistent with Christian beliefs.” But Kayser’s views on homosexuality go way beyond the bounds of typical anti-gay evangelical politics and into the violent fringe: he recently authored a paper arguing for criminalizing homosexuality and evenadvocated imposing the death penalty against offenders based on his reading of Biblical law.
“Difficulty in implementing Biblical law does not make non-Biblical penology just,” he argued. “But as we have seen, while many homosexuals would be executed, the threat of capital punishment can be restorative. Biblical law would recognize as a matter of justice that even if this law could be enforced today, homosexuals could not be prosecuted for something that was done before.”
Even if Paul himself has taken a more moderate stand on gay rights than some of his supporters, playing footsie with characters like this lends creedence to their fringe perspectives. And of course Paul himself came under fire around the same time this report was released for homophobic rhetoric in his newsletters.
Second, folks may remember the proposed legislation in Uganda decreeing the death penalty for homosexual activities. What's of interest in that story is the relationship between this legislation, its supporters, and the American religious group known as "The Family," which is well known both for hosting members of Congress at its house in Washington, D.C. and for hosting the National Prayer Breakfast, at which many congressional leaders make an annual appearance, and of which Brack Obama is a regular attender. Here's a recent Rachel Maddow story on the issue:
It's hard, on the basis of these kinds of connections, to take seriously any complaints either that violent right wing anti-gay rhetoric isn't a genuine problem with practical results in terms of real world violence against LGBT folks, and that any complaints about violent rhetoric against Dan Cathy are misplaced in light of the real world consequences of his positions in the light of real anti-gay violence.