When Scott starts off ranting about right-wing commentary, e.g., at a place called “Bush Country,” my first inclination is, I’ll be honest, to roll my eyes and scroll down. But this time he’s got a a very fine point.
Tamara Wilhite opines there there that one reason the exteme Islamicists hate the US is because of our support of things like gay rights.
What does this have to do with terrorism? Quite a bit. These Muhajadeen — mad Muslim Men — hate us. Their real reason is that we refuse to roll over and cry Mullah. Their stated reasons are our evil vice and our support for Israel. How does the failure of the Federal Marriage Amendment play into their hands? Not only do we allow our women to go unveiled. Not only do we allow our daughters to have sex outside of marriage. Not only do we allow abortion. Not only do we allow women equal rights. We dare to allow homosexuality to exist.
In Muslim countries, the punishment for homosexuality ranges from death to a long prison sentence. Mohammed’s word was for homosexuals to be executed. Not only do we allow homosexuals to exist. Not only don’t we allow them to live, we tolerate them living in the open. They can be seen in public office and public broadcasting. Now, worst of all, we are granting them equal parity in the law with heterosexual couples. If that is not giving the green light to sin, then neither is Madonna dancing around in the near nude provocative.
Fair enough. Frankly, I accept that as a badge of honor — while it’s dangerous to say, “The stuff my enemy despises must be good for me,” I’d say that tolerance and liberty and equality before the law are good things that we should be proud distinguish us from the theocratic tyrannies others would impose.
Then she veers off into left — er, right field.
We don’t stop lesbians from making children. Our courts are slowing giving homosexuals equal adoption rights to children. Now we are unwilling to say that two men or two women married in a civil ceremony are not equal to the natural pairing of man to woman. We have just given the signal that we are the Sodom and Gomorrah cesspool they accuse us of being. All with Kerry and the other Democrats’ support.
If buses of Israeli schoolchildren die for Israel’s existence and Spanish commuters die for their government having a few hundred peacekeepers in Iraq, I wonder how big the gay target will be bombed in protest for this evil.
Um …
Is her point that we shouldn’t do these things because they make the Bad Guys mad at us? Because they make us more of a target, and provoke their narrowmindedness?
Is that really what she means? Does she want (if you don’t mind my saying) to let the terrorists win?
I mean, if you want to let that into your societal calculus of “does this harm us?” I suppose you can. But I suspect that Ms. Wilhite would have a very different response if someone suggested that the “mad Muslim Men” are offended by, say, the overt Christianity of people in the US, and how church groups in the US send missionaries abroad. I doubt she’d say we should lay low and not do anything to offend them, lest we get “targeted.”
Yeesh.
On a tangential point…I pretty much don’t ever want to hear a Christian/Catholic going on about persecution. EVER.
Sadly, you can probably make that same assertion for pretty much every group on the globe. Except, maybe, the Quakers. Pretty much any group/nation/religion/ideology that’s ever been in charge anywhere or anytime has put down “unbelievers” and “outsiders.” Christianity (as an institution) certainly hasn’t been immune, though I don’t know whether that means they don’t get to complain when mistreated — so long as they bear in mind the irony and their own past sins (and watch out for falling back into old patterns).
I know. Immense personal bitterness speaking.