But if the FRC can be called a hate group, where do we stop? Almost every "conservative" group in this country operates with the same M.O. They may project wholesome, patriotic American-ness, but they're all about discrimination, about the demonizing and disenfranchisement of minorities and the empowerment of the white, Protestant master race. Show me a "conservative" group and I'll show you a house-broken KKK.
So why not call the Tea Party a hate group? Why not the whole damn' Republican party? Why not any group that uses wedge issues and bullying to advance its own agenda to the detriment of the common good? At least we could stop calling 'conservatives' patriots. They hate non-white Americans. They hate non-heterosexual Americans. They hate non-Christian Americans. Hell, they hate so many different kinds of Americans you could say they hate America itself based on the stats.
Conservatives like the FRC's Tony Perkins argue that opposition to gay rights - the shtick that got them labeled as a hate group - should not be considered hate. Apparently, there are two sides to the "debate" on whether or not some people should be denied civil rights. Ah... remind you of anything? Gay rights advocate Dan Savage says it best:
"There was once two sides to the race debate. There was once a side, you could go on television and argue for segregation, you could argue against interracial marriage, against the Civil Rights Act, against extending voting rights to African Americans, and that used to be treated as one side . . . of a pressing national debate, and it isn't anymore. And we really need to reach that point with gay and lesbian issues. There are no 'two sides' to the issues about gay and lesbian rights."
We could go further and say there were once "debates" about whether Indians could be regarded as human, whether slavery was wrong or right, whether Jews could run for public office, whether women should vote. And history doesn't exactly smile fondly on the conservatives who played defense on those issues. So we can either label the hate groups now. Or wait a few decades for history to do it anyway.
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Yes, these right wing elitist buffoons will be known the same way the segregationists are known today.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, those who exterminated the Native Americans are still highly revered in Amurkkka. Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, U.S. Grant and many more from the 1800s and early 1900s are horrible human beings by todays standards for what they did to the native population of this continent.