This series of Rod Dreher articles over at The American Conservative says it all … it feels strange linking to Rod here, but he is right on these Social Justice Warriors:
- The Writing’s on the Wall For Christians
- Into the Christian Closet
- The Eclipse of Religious Liberty
- Morality or Mammon?
- The Rout of Conservative Christians
- The Post-Indiana Future for Christians
You know it is over and done for conservative Christians in American “mainstream” politics when the Republican governor and legislature of Arkansas caved so quickly over the new issue of “religious liberty.” That’s a telltale sign that there will never be a modus vivendi between Christians and the homosexual lobby:
“Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed a narrower religious liberty bill into law Thursday after a more expansive measure approved by state legislators earlier in the week spurred an outcry from activists and corporations who feared it would permit discrimination against gays and lesbians.
The latest Arkansas bill largely mirrors a federal “religious freedom” law from the 1990s. The original measure passed by Arkansas legislators Tuesday, like a law in Indiana that also drew national criticism, went beyond other state and federal religious-freedom laws.
The Republican governor quickly signed the new measure into law, just minutes after it passed the state House by an overwhelming margin Thursday afternoon. Mr. Hutchinson had called for changes to the original measure Wednesday amid pressure from companies, including the state’s largest private employer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., and from gay-rights groups.”
In this case, Wal-Mart was the puppeteer behind the scenes:
“IM ZARROLI, BYLINE: Governor Hutchinson has promised to sign the bill, but he backed out at the last minute. In a press conference yesterday, he said one of the things that changed his mind was opposition from Arkansas businesses.
GOVERNOR ASA HUTCHINSON: I have had some communication personally with some of the business leaders across the state. Others have communicated in different fashions. And they raise an important issue.
ZARROLI: The bill would have barred state and local governments from infringing on someone’s religious beliefs unless the government had a strong compelling interest. Critics say the bill would allow businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians. Supporters deny that. But as the controversy mushroomed, the state’s business community began opposing the bill. Jay Chesshir is president and CEO of the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce. …
ZARROLI: Among the companies opposing bill was Arkansas-based Walmart, the country’s biggest private-sector employer. State representative Camille Bennett says what scared businesses wasn’t just bad PR. The bill is based on a federal law adopted by many states but is much broader. And she says it would open up private companies to lawsuits. For instance, she says, what if someone believed a textbook used in local schools violated his or her religious beliefs?
ZARROLI: Bennett says companies like Walmart have lots of smart attorneys. And once they realized the potential impact of the bill, they began to call for its defeat. Jim Zarroli, NPR News.”
There you have it: “homophobia” is now the equivalent of “racism,” “gay marriage” is a sacred cause which is now the equivalent of voting rights/civil rights for blacks, and the conservative Christians who disagree are now all going to be treated as pariahs, run out of the phony conservative “mainstream,” and stigmatized as the equivalent of Bull Connor and the segregationists.
Who knows what American public school teachers will be telling future generations about homosexuality and gender? Will churches be stripped of their tax exempt status? All that is left now is for the Supreme Court to hand down the homosexual equivalent of the Loving decision. That will probably happen later this summer.
It got like this because the Christian right refused to get radical. They wouldn’t listen to even a soft right pundit like Pat Buchanan or an org like CoCC – they said they were too extreme. They chased after the big business/money and power candidates with their votes and financial resources with zero return. After 40 years of supporting the Republican party – this is what they get. The question is, what are they going to do about it?
I hate to say this because I am on their side politically – but they are chumps and until they stop being chumps, they will always be the lamb that everyone slaughters. I really tire of watching these people get the shit kicked out of them politically but they refuse to listen to anyone outside of their little inner circle of churches and tea party conventions.
I don’t think it’s that hard. It’s just rights obsessed proposition nation democratic republicanism doing what it always does.
They could make up for this by quickly passing a law against kosher and halal slaughter. But they’d sooner line up to be slaughtered themselves.
The ruling god of this country is not the God of Abraham, but rather Mammon, the demon of unnatural blind lust for money. Mediaeval and classic demonographers describe Mammon as an androgyne, i.e.: Hermaphrodite.
In his immense The Mind and Society, Vilfredo Pareto takes it as axiomatic that the democratic republic is (condensed paraphrase) as if the metamorphic precursor of the plutocratic oligarchy.
Ok, the real lesson here is that whoever is most organized, and most vocal IN THE STREETS, will win.
Where are the Christians? Where are good Southerners? Where are legal arms of the “morale majority”?
The side who turned out the largest, loudest bunch will win 9 times in 10 in these battles, and that’s not our side.
Anyone who doubts the effectiveness on politicians of public demonstrations, has but to look at the events of the last several days…
There are two brands which I never, ever buy anymore: the first is Starbuck’s because of its aggressive position on race, guns, and gay marriage, and the second is Cheerio’s because of their fondness for putting interracial couples in their commercials. I just can’t do it anymore.
We also avoid Tyson Chicken in the grocery store, but its competitors like Pilgrim’s Pride are just as bad.
The squeaky wheel gets the most grease, not the quiet well oiled one. We tried it by voting,we tried in by being patient and we tried it by being civil, none of it has worked. Everyone was happy when the Republicans took both houses last yr, and they stabbed us in the back again. How many more times are we going to vote for the same back stabbers?
Voting for the opposite side of the same coin is not the answer, they’re both in the pockets of the Jewsih lobbies and the big corps. Send the Republicans a message by staying home come 2016 because no matter who wins, we lose.
I stayed home in 2014 and had virtually nothing to say about the midterms which was quite a change from previous years.
I have a pretty good record in presidential elections. I didn’t vote for George W. Bush, Barack Obama, John McCain or Mitt Romney.
“I would that ye were hot or cold, but because thou art lukewarm, I spue you out of my mouth.” – YHWH God
Is it time for a liturgy of malediction, yet?
Damn straight…
“For instance, she says, what if someone believed a textbook used in local schools violated his or her religious beliefs?” – Are there any examples of how walmart would have any sort of liability here?
Traditionalist Christians have more coming to them. A lot more. This train hasn’t even begun to roll.
Dreher has anonymous sympathizers in academia. One of them passed him this comment a while back.
The problem is, as Rod and others have said, you can’t put the genie back into the bottle. We humans don’t, on the whole, operate like that. We, especially in the West, have an insatiable need to both realize any conceivable and theoretically attainable desire and to push it to its limits. Thus the conceivable to some (the inconceivable to others, to most) will come to fruition. All of it. Some of it is already being tested in courts in some European countries and in Canada. There eventually will be polyamorous marriages. Ditto, marriages to oneself; to one’s pet; to one’s sibling(s); to inanimate objects; to flora and fauna (e.g., trees and, say, a wolf pack in the Rockies) and rest assured the age of consent will eventually be all but obliterated in order to accommodate self-fulfilling desires. If you think this is far-fetched, hyperbolic, b.s. from some Ted Cruz lovin’, “Tea-Bag” wearin’, gun-totin’, GOP useful idiot, you my fellow reader are only fooling yourself. I invite you to start reading academic journals in the humanities and to some extent, the sciences. Specially ones that pertain to bioethics, ethics, and queer/gender studies. You have no idea what’s in store for you middle-America, orthodox America (of any religion). I’m not sure even Rod, who is clued into it more than most, does. As I said above, it all begins in the academe. You’ve been warned.
I can’t think of an organization with more.moral authority than Wal-Mart.
1. Loss of control of the borders
2. Overextension of the military abroad
3. Fiscal irresponsibility
4. Decline of traditional morals throughout society
Any historian will tell you that those are the four primary factors behind the disintegration of the Roman Empire, a process that began in the mid-4th century and took about 60 years. By the time the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410 the damage had long been done; Rome itself was not even the capital of the Western Empire anymore (it was Ravenna) and the immigrant (slave) population far outnumbered the founding stock. It’s no secret that rampant homosexuality was a hallmark of this era in Roman history.
I may be preaching to the converted here, but if this type of stuff (acceptance/promotion of faggotry) doesn’t wake you up, you’re probably not a man who would make your ancestors proud.
Ulfric, yeah pretty much. Also, most of these people would be the first to scream rayciss when the TV told them too in other contexts. Dreher is only marginally better than most mainstream traditionalists on that score (he links Sailer occasionally) . If I recall correctly, Dreher had nothing good to say about Heimbach when he caused a stir in orthodox circles. In some respects, mainstream traditionalists are getting exactly what they deserve for accepting the logic of the civil rights movement.
Yep, he is a well known POS, but I agree with him on this one issue.
It’s going to be fun watching “mainstream” conservative Christians adjust to their new status as the moral equvailent of all of us detestable racists.
Sometimes one must go where the action is. Important conversations do popup on Dreher’s blog; this post shows that. Select mainstream writers such as Dreher can be good on a narrow range of topics that are important in the current climate. It is amazing how Dreher can’t see his own contradictions. He’ll turn around without a thought and treat racists more or less the same way these gay fanatics treat him, though at least Dreher’s attitudes are grounded in a coherent theology rather than blind europhobic hate.
If you can’t repeal the first amendment, you can make it functionally useless through economic blackmail.
The American ruling class has weaponized the economic and financial system. They use this weapon against everyone from the family pizza parlor in Indiana to — in vastly more sophisticated form — whole nations like Russia and Iran.
White americans bicker about ‘women’s roles,’ and sexual preference, while the rest of the eurosphere, even our own brethren in Australia, FIGHT:
http://www.news.com.au/national/reclaim-australia-and-no-room-for-racism-rallies-clash-across-australia/story-fncynjr2-1227291081061
This is also a testament that nothing ‘real’ gets done if it’s not in real life.
Sadly, true.
We’ve been holding our rallies in the South for almost two years now.
Paraphrasing a famous, or is it infamous?, Radio personality; “When stuff like this happens in a place like Arkansas, as opposed to the North/Northeast/Left Coast, where it normally happens, then we know the country is in trouble. That was back in the early nineties.
I can’t believe how fast all these alleged “Conservatives” are crumbling…
I also thought this “religious liberty” issue would play out much longer.
The same thing happened after the Communist Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Same goes for the Communist Homosexual Movement of modern times. When it’s “normal” by America it’s pushed out of the political discussion. Now the idea of segregation is silenced in politics and same goes for Christian Family Values & Morals. Just look at the new flavor of the month candidates running for office this year. They ignore social issues and talk about the Economy and Jobs. I could care less about their Economy or Jobs. #Secede
More here:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/christians-frank-bruni-lgbt-religious-liberty/
Will churches be stripped of their tax exempt status?
Something to be hoped for, indeed pushed. Churches whoring themselves for LBJ’s filthy lucre was a major waypoint on the road to destruction.
Apple, Wal-Mart, and Acxion were the corporations that threatened to leave the state if gays were in any way impacted by this bill. Can you not see where a Social-Nationalist aspect is needed in any healthy nation? Unbridled Capitalism run riot! There are some things higher in life than creature comforts and corporate profits. In other words patriotism before profits and I mean patriotism in the original sense as loyalty to a kindred stock. (Patriot- from the Latin word Pater denoting father. Thu,s in its most pristine sense loyalty to a kindred stock) What passes for patriotism in America is actually the very negation of the word.