The politics of hate

Wherein Utah Senator Chris Buttars rambles on about Evil Gays and how they’re aiming to destroy America. He was captured on tape — which, along with audio, is now loose on the Net. It runs about 15 minutes or so. For example …

I believe in the Constitution being something that was inspired of God and the way these people are destroying the Constitution is they’re saying the Constitution is a living document, that means it’s subject to change.  But truth don’t change, it does not change, and I won’t accept any of that.  So they say, well, marriage is between a man and a women and that’s changed, look around, look at all these combinations. Combinations of abominations, as far as I’m concerned. To me, homosexuality will always be a sexual perversion and you say that around here now and everybody goes nuts, but I don’t care.  

[…] They want to talk about being nice, but they’re the meanest buggers I’ve ever seen. It’s just like the Muslims. Muslims are good people and their religion is anti-war, but it’s been taken over by the radical side and the gays are totally taken over by the radical side. You don’t see the gay out there saying “let’s not do this gang.” You see them marching around with signs and everything else.

[…] I believe the whole thing is immoral and I believe you’re moving towards … you see, if you say to me “quit shoving your morals down my throat, Buttars” my answer back is “you know my morals. What’s yours?” What is the morals of a gay person? You can’t answer that, because anything goes. So now you’re moving towards a society that has no morals and there’s never been a nation that survived that’s done that.

[…] There’s a lot of dollar costs. You take their trying to have insurance rights the same as a man and a woman. Now, when you’re married, insurance companies can quantify, we got this many married people so they run their underwriting. You have no way to do that with gay people and you’re going to take on paying for all the extra, most often, diseases, and that’s huge. And now you, as a straight, get to share that cost. That’s what I’m talking about. Those kinds of diseases are not exclusive with gays, but they represent the huge majority.

[…] I believe that you will destroy the foundation of American society because I believe the cornerstone of it is a man and a woman and a family. It is, in my mind, the beginning of the end. Oh, it’s worse than that. Sure, Sodom and Gomorrah was localized, this is world-wide. You can’t tell me that something was going on in Sodom and Gomorrah is not going on wholesale right now and to a large degree among the gay community … The underbelly is they do not want equality, they want superiority.

Evil Gays! Abomination! No morals! Just like Islamic terrorists! Trying to get all their Evil Gay Diseases covered by insurance! Aiming to take over the world! 

Buttars, for his part, is shocked, shocked that his statements were released without his prior review and approval. He doesn’t actually deny any of it, mind you, but he’s deeply, deeply hurt and “disappointed.” He also claims that the (extensive) quotes were taken out of context, though, again, he doesn’t actually disagree or deny anything he said.

His supporters, meanwhile, are all “Yay! Call the Evil Gays evil! How dare you criticize someone expressing their opinion, Evil Gay Lovers?  Criticizing other people’s opinions is evil! Go, Buttars, go!”

Hopefully Buttars, elected three times, will, in fact, “go” next election time. Though given Utah politics …

Today, the Utah state legislature “dealt a final blow” to the last of five gay rights bills taken up under the Common Ground Initiative, when it defeated a bill that would have granted gay couples rights of inheritance and medical decision-making. Yesterday, the state House rejected bills that would have allowed gay adoption and protected gays from housing and employment discrimination.