Commentary
The Conservative Political Action Conference and other dark visions: Part 2
By Mel Seesholtz, Ph.D.
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Mar 13, 2009, 00:16

The last days of February 2009 bore witness to the 36th annual Conservative Political Action Conference: a cavalcade of self-inflated caricatures dragging their lead balloons.

Liberty Counsel’s president and general counsel Mat Staver was a pre-conference kick-off speaker. Mr. Staver is a staple at these sorts of events. He believes his efforts to make gay Americans permanent second-class citizens will free Christians from “persecution.”

On this occasion Mr. Staver “explained to the CPAC audience that ‘same-sex marriage sets forth a fatherless policy’ and [said] that you don’t need a bunch of scientific data to know that that is bad. After all, kids without fathers tend to fare poorly . . . and if you need proof, all you have to do is take a look at the prison population.”

But that nonsense was the subject of Part 1 of this article . . .

While Mr. Staver was making his silly statements and advocating denying civil equality to gays and their families (as was his ideological compatriot in Colorado), another CPAC speaker was advocating making sure that every potential criminal has equal and unfettered access to a firearm. After all, “the guys with the guns make the rules”:

CPAC: If You Don’t Have a Gun, You Have Nothing
February 27, 2009 - 12:35pm

The NRA’s Wayne LaPierre tells the CPAC audience that the 2nd Amendment is the foundation of all of our freedoms and that all rights and freedoms are nothing but “stains on a rotten piece of parchment paper in a museum somewhere” until they are “guarded by the blued steel and dry powder of a free and armed people.”

He also proclaims that he knows it is not politically correct to say so, but he doesn’t care “if their butts pucker from here to the Potomac, the Founding Fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules” . . .

“Gimme your wallet and jewelry or I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off!”

Yep. Those “guys with the guns” certainly do “make the rules.”

There were plenty more big shots firing with both barrels at CPAC:

CPAC: President Gingrich Makes His Entrance
February 27, 2009 - 2:44pm

While every other speaker at CPAC made their entrance from the stage, Newt Gingrich got the presidential treatment. . . .

Gingrich entered from the back of the ballroom and spent three minutes making his way through the throng of well-wishers, hand-shakers, and supporters on his way to the stage while “Eye of the Tiger” blasted over the crowd. . . .

“Eye the Tiger”? How about “Record of a Discredited Politician”?

And what would a cavalcade of conservative caricatures be without these two, as reported by OneNewsNow, the propaganda organ of Don Wildmon’s American Family Association:

Obama in Coulter crosshairs at CPAC

WASHINGTON - The satirical political commentary of best-selling conservative author Ann Coulter proved to be one of the biggest attractions at the Conservative Political Action Conference, which wrapped up last night in Washington.

[Coulter] was introduced by former House Majority Leader Tom Delay, who said Coulter has a “backbone of titanium.” . . .

You remember Tom DeLay (aka “The Hammer”), the former Republican House Majority Leader. In December 2002, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman reported that DeLay, one of Washington’s “most feared and bare-knuckled partisans,” had openly admitted he was “on a mission from God to promote a ‘biblical worldview’ in American politics.”

DeLay resigned from his leadership position in 2005 following his indictment on conspiracy charges. Click here to view his arrest warrant. How appropriate that he should introduce Ann Coulter, who makes her living mocking others and corrupting intelligent political discourse with ludicrous, self-serving assertions.

And speaking of corrupting intelligent political discourse with ludicrous assertions, an online video ad sponsored by The Family Policy Council of West Virginia depicts marriage equality supporters as snipers targeting “traditional families.” The entire ad can be seen here.

To suggest same-sex couples and their children somehow threaten “traditional families” is an unconscionable lie and a shameful scare tactic. But you do have to wonder what Wayne LaPierre and the NRA would say about this conservative “Christian” group’s ad.

California’s Proposition 8 and the campaign to pass it clearly demonstrated that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a previously unheralded partner in the “new” conservative Religious Right. The Mormons put a lot of time and money into revoking the civil right of same-sex couples in California, and they’re currently gearing up in Illinois:

Mormon Machine Working Against Civil Unions in Illinois
Wednesday, March 4, 2009

The following official email was just sent out (via the LDS Church website) to all the members of the Nauvoo 3rd Ward, as approved by Kristy Combs, ward website administrator, and by Bishop Chris Church of the Nauvoo 3rd Ward. (Because it was sent through the LDS website, it required the authorization of a bishop or higher.) . . .

But the day after that article appeared, there was this one:

Mormon church says bishop acting alone in civil union fight
03.05.2009

(Chicago, Illinois) The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says that an Illinois bishop was acting alone in sending an e-mail to members of his ward urging them to oppose a civil union bill before the state legislators.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) had this to say about the Illinois e-mail: “The e-mail misleads citizens in Illinois by blatantly misstating that the civil unions legislation would ‘empower the public schools to begin teaching this lifestyle to our young children regardless of parental requests otherwise.’ It goes on to issue this incendiary and inaccurate warning: ‘It will also create grounds for rewriting all social mores.’” . . .

Given how tightly the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is controlled, it’s a bit difficult to believe a rogue bishop “was acting alone in sending an e-mail to members of his ward urging them to oppose a civil union bill before the state legislators.” It seems much more plausible that LDS was testing the waters after some less than flattering PR:

Direct Evidence Mormon Church Violated Tax Exempt Status
Friday, January 30, 2009

On November 3, 2008, ProtectMarriage.com received a contribution of $30,354.85 from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. You read that right. The Mormon Church donated more than $30 thousand dollars [sic] to eradicate the right of same-sex couples to marry. This is clear evidence, with a paper trail showing the Church and their personal financial contribution. See the filing here.

A day later this item appeared:

More ‘Revelations’ For the Mormon Church Tax Scandal

Mormon church officials, facing an ongoing investigation by the state Fair Political Practices Commission, Friday reported nearly $190,000 in previously unlisted assistance to the successful campaign for Prop. 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.

Then came a “confession”:

Mormon Church admits it spent 100 times more for Prop 8 than reported
02.02.2009

(San Francisco, California) Six weeks into an investigation by California’s Fair Political Practices Commission, the Church of Latter-Day Saints has admitted that it spent nearly $188,000 more on the campaign to approve Proposition 8 that it had initially stated. . . .

And then things got even worse for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

Prominent Mormons Reimbursed for Prop 8
February 3, 2009

In what is now being called Mormon Gate by Californians Against Hate, the LDS church finds itself embroiled in a new scandal every day over their social, and financial involvement in banning same-sex marriage in California.

All this may be the tip of the iceberg as new reports indicate the following people, and probably more to follow were allegedly reimbursed by the church. . . .

Interestingly, it appears that at least some holier-than-thou Mormons who may have donated to the Yes on 8 campaign or at least approved of their Church’s involvement in “protecting the sanctity of marriage” were also involved in other things:

Utah the USA’s Online Porn Capital
March 04, 2009

Utah not only led the charge with donations to pass California’s gay marriage ban -- the state also leads the pack with the highest level of online pornography usage. . . .

People in the 27 states banning gay marriage boast 11 percent more porn subscribers than states which don’t specifically restrict same-sex marriage. . . .

(The nationwide study was conducted by Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School and published in the American Economic Association’s Journal of Economic Perspectives. You can read the complete study here.)

But such results should not come as a surprise since, according to Mormon beliefs, “God” is as flesh-and-blood as you and me, and even though he lived on planet Kolob, he was able to pop in and have sexual intercourse with Mary, resulting in her pregnancy and (illegitimate?) child, Jesus. The “What Does Mormonism Teach?” website provides a documenting bibliography. See number 6, “God.”

And a “Church” based on these rather odd beliefs has the audacity to campaign against loving monogamous couples’ civil right to a civil marriage?

It seems the “conservative movement” hasn’t moved at all. It’s still attached at the hip to the radical Religious Right, and both are an insult to rational political discourse.

To be sure, a healthy dialogue between different political points of view is necessary, but that’s not what’s happening in America, 2009. Both sides of the marriage issue are entrenched. One side claims same-sex couples have a basic civil right to the state-sanctioned civil institution called “marriage.” The other side claims gays do not have that civil right to the state-sanctioned civil institution called “marriage” because homosexuality and homosexual unions offend “God.”

Is compromise possible?

In early February 2009, The New York Times ran an OpEd by David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values and the author of The Future of Marriage, and Jonathan Rauch, guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and author of Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights and Good for America. The op-ed was titled “A Reconciliation on Gay Marriage.” They proposed that “Congress . . . bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage.”

Is that a compromise, or just the latest version of “separate but equal”: a social experiment formerly known as “segregation,” a bone thrown to second-class citizens to keep them in their place?

Either all Americans are equal or they’re not. Kate Harding, in an article for Salon.com’s Broadsheet, pointed out some of the other flaws in the Blankenhorn/Rauch proposal, as did Pam Spaulding and Mustang Bobby.

Dr. John Corvino, professor of philosophy at Wayne State University, in his article “Why gay couples are like straight couples” looked at the Blankenhorn/Rauch proposal and “a counter-proposal from Ryan Anderson and Sherif Girgis at the conservative website, thepublicdiscourse.com.” Professor Corvino came to the inevitable conclusion: “The problem is that Anderson and Girgis divide couplings into two crude categories: (1) married (or marriageable) heterosexuals, and (2) everyone else: committed gay couples, elderly sisters, cohabiting, fly-fishing buddies, what have you. They then implausibly suggest that those in column two are all of equal social value. . . .”

Either all Americans have equal access to the same state-sanctioned civil institution called “marriage,” or they don’t.

Do the Founding Fathers’ promises and principles of civil equality for all guide America, or does the inherently divisive, concocted dogma of organized religion?