70 replies to this topic

[LFC]

American Christians are continuing their drive towards a pan-America/Europe white fascist theocracy. And Steve Bannon is right in the middle of it, bringing the right-wingnut power hungry Catholics in to joing the right-wingnut power hungry Protestants. I guess they're looking to bring back the good old days of glorious Earthly power with the side bonus of being able to torture and murder "heretics" at will.

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According to a new analysis released by openDemocracy, Christian-right fundamentalists linked to the Trump administration and Steve Bannon are among a dozen American groups that have poured at least $50 million of dark money into Europe over the last decade.

Between them, these groups have backed armies of ultra-conservative lawyers and political activists, as well as so-called family values campaigns against LGBTQ rights, sex education and abortion—and a number appear to have increasing links with Europe’s far right.

They are spending money on a scale “not previously imagined,” according to lawmakers and human rights advocates, who have called openDemocracy’s findings “shocking.”

Among the biggest spenders is a group whose chief counsel is also Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow. Another organization has collaborated with a controversial Rome-based institute backed by Steve Bannon.

None of these American groups discloses who its donors are—though at least two have links to famous conservative billionaires, such as the Koch brothers (who helped bankroll the Tea Party movement) and the family of Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos.

‘Nobody should be in any doubt as to the insidious nature of these fundamentalist groups’

The increasing ties between some of these Christian conservative groups and the European far right will be on display this weekend at a summit of the World Congress of Families (WCF): a network of American, Russian and other ultra-conservative activists.

Right-wing politicians and their supporters from across Europe are expected to attend the event in Verona, Italy—including the Italian deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, who has described the WCF as a showcase for “the Europe that we like.”

A cross-party group of more than 40 members of the European Parliament (MEPs) has called on the EU’s transparency tsar Frans Timmermans to look into the influence of “U.S. Christian fundamentalists… with the greatest urgency” ahead of May’s European Parliament elections.

In a letter reacting to openDemocracy’s findings, and copied to the presidents of the European Council, European Commission and European Parliament, the MEPs have demanded action to protect European democracy “against nefarious outside influences.”

EDIT: Graphic of the money trail or at least the part we know about.

[LFC]

It's a f***ing war on gay people. The Christianists are marching and they're ready to bash Jeebus into those godless homos. These people are the faces of hate and cruelty, pure and simple. They are clear examples of what can be so wrong with religion.

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In Kansas, Republican lawmakers, backed by evangelical Christian leaders, introduced two bizarre but nonetheless horrendous bills earlier this year.

One bill, similar to bills introduced in Wyoming and South Carolina last year, seeks to define same-sex marriages as “parody marriages,” and define gay and transgender identities as “mythology,” part of a “religion of secular humanism” that violates the Constitution’s Establishment Clause. The other bill states that same-sex marriages “erode community standards of decency, unlike secular marriage between a man and a woman.”

Tennessee Republicans are pushing the odiously-titled Natural Marriage Defense Act, introduced in February, which would prohibit the state from recognizing court decisions that affirm unions between people of the same gender.

In West Virginia a few weeks ago, a Republican legislator, in a repugnant statement, compared LGBT people to the KKK, while a group of LGBT youth in Wyoming allege that a GOP legislator stunned them in February when they visited her office and she told them that homosexuality was comparable to bestiality and pedophilia. (The legislator later denied making the statements.)

The outbursts aren’t just happening in red state America: In New York City, Bronx City Councilman Rubén Diaz Sr., in a reference to the Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who is gay, warned that City Hall is “controlled by the homosexual community.”

Anti-LGBT forces, like many on the right, are clearly feeling energized. They’d been dealt a setback by the Supreme Court’s Obergefell marriage equality ruling in 2015. But even before that they’d been planning and plotting what they would do if they lost, looking to the courts to try diminish marriage equality and LGBT rights, as they have done on abortion rights, chipping away at Roe v. Wade over a period of many years.

And they’ve now been electrified by President Donald Trump, whose administration has moved to roll back LGBT rights in so many areas.

From backing challenges to lower court rulings that favored LGBT rights and putting dozens of judges with alarming records of hostility to LGBT rights on the federal bench, to banning transgender people from the military and allowing religious exemptions to the Obama administration’s ban on discrimination against LGBT people among federal contractors, Trump has dealt jarring blows to equality.

Those opposed to LGBT rights have also been emboldened by a Supreme Court that has lurched to the far right, as the previous swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy, a leader on the high court on LGBT rights, was replaced by Trump with Brett Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh was White House staff secretary under President George W. Bush as the president promoted a federal marriage amendment that would have banned same-sex marriage in the Constitution.

[LFC]

Another airport says "no" to Chick-fil-A. They want to support gay bashing then that's their right but when decent folks band together and reject them for it then they're exercising the very same "religious freedom" that the Christians are demanding. (Yes, yes. All the usual caveats how religious freedom is only to be offered to those who are defenders of the One True God™.)

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“We can’t allow companies who support anti-LGBTQ groups to do business at state owned facilities.”
Chick-fil-A, the $10 billion privately-owned fast food chicken chain has been barred by yet another city over its multi-million dollar donations to anti-LGBT organizations, this time in Buffalo, New York, thanks to one equality-minded lawmaker.

Democratic State Assemblyman Sean Ryan says plans for a Chick-fil-A at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport have been canceled, and said there’s nothing further to discuss, as HuffPost reports.

“I don’t believe there is anything to discuss … on the issue,” Assemblyman Ryan said via Twitter. “We can’t allow companies who support anti-LGBTQ groups to do business at state owned facilities.”

He added later:

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Assemblyman Sean Ryan
@SeanMRyan149
Update: I applaud the decision that has been made to remove Chick-fil-A from plans for the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. Thank you to everyone who reached out to share their opinion.

Last month lawmakers in Texas barred Chick-fil-A from setting up shop at the San Antonio airport, much to the anger of Senator Ted Cruz.

Chick-fil-A’s charitable giving foundation “gave $1.8 million to discriminatory groups in 2017, despite reportedly claiming it was winding down that practice last year,” ThinkProgress reported last month, citing “newly released tax filings.”

Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy has said, “we support biblical families,” and if you support same-sex marriage you “are inviting God’s judgment on our nation.” He’s also said that we “shake our fist at Him” when we support marriage equality. He also said same-sex marriage is the result of a “depraved” mind and called it “twisted up kind of stuff.”

Through his foundation Cathy supports groups that advocate for harmful “conversion therapy,” depict gay people as pedophiles, want to make “gay behavior” illegal, and even say gay people should be “exported” out of America.

[LFC]

Texass Christianists look to enshrine the ability to ignore your government job's duties and engage in "religious" discrimination. If you aren't willing to take on the responsibilities of your job for all of a state's residents then you shouldn't take the job.

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After emotional testimony, a forceful show of opposition from leaders in the state’s business community and more than an hour of floor debate, the Texas Senate on Tuesday gave preliminary approval to a sweeping religious refusals bill, a priority proposal for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick that LGTBQ advocates have called a “license to discriminate.”

The measure, Lubbock Republican Charles Perry’s Senate Bill 17, would allow occupational license holders like social workers or lawyers to cite “sincerely held religious beliefs” when their licenses are at risk due to professional behavior or speech. It would also prevent licensing boards from enacting regulations that burden “an applicant’s or license holder’s free exercise of religion.” The bill does not protect police officers, first responders or doctors who refuse to provide life-saving care.

After a heated debate, the measure passed on a 19–12 initial vote, with one Democrat, Sen. Eddie Lucio, voting for it, and one Republican, Sen. Kel Seliger, voting against. It requires one more vote in the Senate before it can be sent to the Texas House for debate.

Perry said the bill provides a defense for licensed professionals who find themselves before credentialing boards based on conduct or speech motivated by their “sincerely held religious beliefs” — a pre-emptive protection for religious employees at a time when, he claimed, religion is under attack.

But LGBTQ advocates and Democrats have criticized the bill as an attempt to give cover to those who would deny critical services to members of the LGBTQ community. Last week, leaders from major businesses like Amazon, Facebook and Google, as well as tourism officials from some of the state’s biggest cities, came out in force against the bill. Discriminating against LGBTQ communities is bad for business, they said.

[LFC]

More Christianist hate and sickness. My embrace of atheism grows stronger by the day.

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An organization whose self-proclaimed goal is to “bring God back to America” is pushing for a piece of legislation in Tennessee that will let adoption and foster care agencies discriminate against LGBT couples.

The Tennessean reports that an organization called the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation is lobbying lawmakers to support backing the adoptions bill, which they argue is essential to securing their “religious freedom.”

The Tennesseean notes that similar legislation passed recently in Oklahoma and Kansas, and the bill’s main sponsor says that it is modeled after legislation that’s on the books in Virginia.

The legislation could be problematic from a legal perspective, however, given that it expands beyond adoption agencies and allows for foster care agencies to discriminate against LGBT parents as well.

“Foster care agencies are essentially contractors for the Department of Children’s Services, and are paid a daily rate depending on a child’s needs,” the Tennesseean reports. “If this legislation also passes the Senate, then taxpayer-funded organizations would be able to exclude certain people based on the organizations’ written religious or moral beliefs.”

[LFC]

The greatest fear of of the sicko Christian right is quickly being realized. This is Dreher's worst nightmare. As time goes on and the older Christianists die off the younger generations will look unfavorably at those who still want to use their religion as an excuse to bash gays. Just as the stigma of divorce fell away so to will the stigma of being gay. Chalk one up for morality.

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The election of Chicago’s first black lesbian mayor and the rise to prominence of a gay presidential candidate have shown beyond a doubt that in US politics — at least among Democrats — being LGBTQ is now utterly accepted.

Another lesbian candidate just won the mayoral race in Madison, Wisconsin, while a third earned a spot in a runoff to be mayor of Kansas City, Missouri.

The latest victories come after a steady shift in cultural attitudes fueled a “Rainbow wave” of gay and lesbian candidates across America in 2018, even as Donald Trump’s administration has chipped away at protections of the LGBTQ community.

The number of openly gay elected officials nationwide nearly doubled last year, to 682, according to the Victory Fund, which supports the election of LGBTQ candidates.

The group backed Lori Lightfoot, who won Chicago’s mayoral race despite never having held public office.

Young Americans are “watching us, and they’re seeing the beginning of something, well, a little bit different,” Lightfoot said in her victory speech.

“It doesn’t matter who you love, just as long as you love.”

That acceptance is taking hold nationwide, empowering a community that has been traditionally under-represented in US politics, where sexual orientation and family values have often stirred debate.

As recently as 2006, polls showed a majority of Americans were uncomfortable or had reservations about a gay presidential candidate.

Today a combined 68 percent are either enthusiastic or comfortable with such a candidate, according to an NBC News survey this week.

Congress now has a historic number of openly lesbian, gay or bisexual members, all Democrats: eight in the 435-seat House of Representatives and two in the 100-member Senate.

Last November, Colorado’s Jared Polis became the first openly gay person elected governor.

“As the nation becomes more accepting of LGBTQ people, voters are focusing less on a candidate’s sexual orientation and gender identity and more on their issue positions and their vision for the future — and they tend to like what they see,” the Victory Fund’s Elliot Imse told AFP Wednesday.

[pnwguy]

LFC, on 03 April 2019 - 04:39 PM, said:

The greatest fear of of the sicko Christian right is quickly being realized. This is Dreher's worst nightmare. As time goes on and the older Christianists die off the younger generations will look unfavorably at those who still want to use their religion as an excuse to bash gays. Just as the stigma of divorce fell away so to will the stigma of being gay. Chalk one up for morality.

Still, it would be a considerable challenge for the entire country to elect a Mayor Pete, much as I really would love to see him in office. There would be a phalanx of forces mobilized on the religious right that will see that possible election as their own Custer's Last Stand. And while Dumpster's rhetoric has usually avoided gay bashing, he would go there in a heart beat if Pete became the nominee.

[Traveler]

LFC, on 03 April 2019 - 04:39 PM, said:

The greatest fear of of the sicko Christian right is quickly being realized. This is Dreher's worst nightmare. As time goes on and the older Christianists die off the younger generations will look unfavorably at those who still want to use their religion as an excuse to bash gays. Just as the stigma of divorce fell away so to will the stigma of being gay. Chalk one up for morality.

That 68% says Butttigieg should have no problem. We all can write off that 32%, as it is almost entirely, if not all, trump voters.

And I am coming to the conclusion that trump's bashing has no effect on the majority that disapprove of trump. If anything, it will raise Pete's approvals.

Edited by Traveler, 04 April 2019 - 12:27 PM.

[HockeyDon]

Well, sometimes those gays show empathy or sympathy or those other pansy displays of emotion that Republicans want nothing to do with. Can't have that in our government institutions. It's either hate and fear all the time or burn it all to the ground!

[LFC]

The Mormons are backing off a bit. The orthodox and fundamentalist types will trust them even less now.

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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon or LDS Church, has rolled back a 2015 policy that treated same-sex marriage as an act of apostasy, and that barred children of same-sex couples from being baptized into the faith until they turned 18, at which point they would have to specifically disavow same-sex marriage and no longer be living with their parents. The announcement of this reversal was made in advance of the LDS Church’s General Conference, a semiannual gathering at which top leaders in the faith deliver instruction to the members.

The policy change is not a complete rollback of the LDS Church’s policies on LGBT issues. (In announcing the shift, Apostle Dallin H. Oaks made clear that the LDS Church still considers same-sex marriage to be “a serious transgression.”) But for LGBT Mormons, the rollback offers some relief from these additional policies that were perceived as particularly cruel and divisive. While not apologizing for the 2015 changes, Oaks wrote that the change “should help affected families”—and that leaders “want to reduce the hate and contention so common today.” What has not changed is Mormon doctrine on LGBT issues, as the Church made clear near the end of its press release. Under existing LDS Church policy, gay, lesbian, and bisexual members must refrain from same-sex sexual activity in order to remain in good standing, while transgender members who receive surgical treatment for gender dysphoria can be subject to discipline.

[LFC]

Another one at TAC (not Dreher this time) wants those from the left side of the spectrum to offer the understanding and acceptance of positions they've find repugnant because those on the right who hate them are people of faith. This whine-fest is over Buttigieg publicly sticking it to Mike Pence, a clearly sick and twisted individual who preached and practiced his own personal form of bigotry. There's no live and let live coming from this asshole.

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Buttigieg could be an interesting test case for multiple reasons. Naturally, religious conservatives will start with Rod Dreher’s question: is there any chance that faith might soften a liberal’s animosity against traditionalists? Thus far the answer seems to be “no,” given Buttigieg’s relentless fixation on Pence. It shouldn’t be necessary to prove to the world that he’s the better Christian just because both men are from Indiana. Buttigieg has come away looking vindictive and immature, and he’s undermined his effort to position himself as a thoughtful moderate.

It’s something of a wasted opportunity, because he had a chance to be generous here. Imagine if he’d said something like: “As a gay man I’m not going to apologize for who I love, but I do understand that faith shapes people’s worldviews in ways that have implications for how they live. I hope that Christians who don’t accept my marriage can come eventually to see it as a good thing. But in the meantime, let’s do our best to meet them where they are, understand what matters to them, and talk in positive terms about the things that we value. We don’t always have to fixate on the places where we disagree.”

A comment like that would have placed progressivism firmly on the moral high ground and relegated religious conservatives to the wrong side of history. But it also would have indicated a good-faith willingness to turn down the temperature on our raging culture wars. Religious conservatives still wouldn’t vote for someone as far left as Buttigieg, but his magnanimity might have impressed a broader range of left-leaning voters who genuinely prefer a more live-and-let-live public square. If they were nervous at all about how a gay president might ignite even more heated cultural controversies, this could serve to calm them. In a Nixon-to-China way, a gay man could in principle be the perfect person to negotiate a livable truce between warring factions.

The author is saying that those in the process of still being viciously and hideously attacked should play nice. Well f*** that noise, beeyatch. You reap what you sow and the right-wing "Christians" have sown disdain from decent folk. The gay rights movement has been explaining why they deserve equal rights and it's fallen on deaf ears on the right. The right has continually proven it's willingness to attack every time they get the political power to do so. I say there should be no letup on calling out these disgusting views until these people can't politically attack those their "religion" find to be lesser in the eyes of God™. Then they'll be free to shout at the wind all they wish.

[golden_valley]

Are we hitting a turning point in the concept of civil discourse with Bettigieg's calling out of those who think like Pence and Omar's saying essentially I am not going to go around apologizing for being Muslim because the attackers of 9/11 were Muslim? No more playing nice by ignoring wrongs, ducking down in an attempt to prevent someone from noticing that we are gay or Muslim, and hoping that aggressors will be shamed enough by our good manners that they'll give up persecuting us.

[LFC]

This has been discussed before but it's worth an update. Remember that these are the people who Dreher wants us to respect. They are out to turn America into a Christianist theocracy and they are motivated by their religious zealotry. Bold is mine.

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n April 3, USA Today published an array of stories under the banner, “Copy, Paste, Legislate,” exploring the political impact of model bills on state-level legislation — more than 10,000 bills from 2010 to 2018 — based on a two-year joint investigation with the Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity. The lead story headline said it all: “You elected them to write new laws. They’re letting corporations do it instead.“

OK, it wasn’t quite all. While corporate influence was the strongest, figures revealed that conservative groups weren’t far behind: There were 4,301 bills from industry and 4,012 from conservative groups, far more than the 1,602 from liberal groups or the 248 classified as “other.” The hidden origins of these bills often hides their true intent. The most notorious such group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, for instance combines business interests with movement conservatives.

But within the fold of “conservative groups” there’s a whole other story to be told about the organizing of extremist religious conservatives, whose political mobilization, as I’ve noted in the past, played a crucial role in electing Donald Trump. Indeed, just the day before “Copy, Past, Legislate” was published, the Texas Senate passed SB-17, a bill that would protect anti-LGBTQ discrimination by all licensed professionals who claim to act on a “sincerely held religious belief.”

“It’s time for Americans to wake up to the harsh reality that the religious right, fueled by their fear of loss of power from the changing demographics in our country and their support from the Trump administration, is emboldened and aggressively pursuing all means possible to maintain white Christian power in America,” Rachel Laser, the president of Americans United For Separation of Church and State, told Salon. “Project Blitz, for example, has already introduced over 50 bills in at least 23 states this year alone,” she added.

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“The authors of the Project Blitz playbook are savvy purveyors of dominionism,” Clarkson told Salon at the time. “They are in it for the long haul and try not to say things that sound too alarming. ​But they live an immanent theocratic vision.” Not all their allies would go all the way with them, Clarkson told me, but the theocratic end they envision is chillingly akin to “The Handmaid’s Tale” — reason enough to warrant far more attention than they’ve gotten so far.

The first tier of Project Blitz aims at importing the Christian nationalist worldview into public schools and other aspects of the public sphere, the second tier aims at making government increasingly a partner in “Christianizing” America, and the third tier contains three types of proposed laws that “protect” religious beliefs and practices specifically intended to benefit bigotry.

“Although category three is divided in three parts, you could also see it as having two main underlying intentions,” Clarkson explained. “First to denigrate the LGBTQ community, and second to defend and advance the right to discriminate. This is one way that the agenda of theocratic dominionism is reframed as protecting the right of theocrats to discriminate against those deemed second-class, at best. As the late theocratic theologian R.J. Rushdoony said, ‘Only the right have rights.'”

Read on ... and realize that this is a group being feverishly courted by Trump and the Republicans. Their party was consumed by a host of nutters but they'll never learn. If the one's who aren't Jeebus freaks think they won't get kicked to the curb they aren't very bright.

[LFC]

Franklin Graham called on Pete Butigieg to repent for being gay. I call on Franklin Graham to repent for being Franklin Graham.

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Franklin Graham, one of the country’s most influential evangelical Christians, has called on Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg to “repent” for being gay. Graham, the president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, called homosexuality “something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized,” in a tweet Wednesday. At a recent CNN town hall, Buttigieg said to cheers, “God does not have a political party.” Graham responded to the candidate’s statement: “... [Pete Buttigieg] is right—God doesn’t have a political party. But God does have commandments, laws & standards... Mayor Buttigieg says he’s a gay Christian... The Bible says marriage is between a man & a woman—not two men, not two women,” Graham tweeted.

Buttigieg addressed such religious-based criticism during the town hall. “It can be challenging to be a person of faith who’s also part of the LGBTQ community and yet, to me, the core of faith is regard for one another,” Buttigieg said. “... Part of God’s love is experienced, according to my faith tradition, is in the way that we support one another and, in particular, support the least among us.”

[LFC]

Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough has words for Franklin Graham. They aren't encouragement.

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MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on Thursday launched a brutal broadside against the Rev. Franklin Graham for his attack on Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s sexuality.

After reading Graham’s statement imploring Buttigieg to “repent” for being gay, Scarborough got extremely angry and told Graham to keep quiet about others’ sexuality when he has spend the past three years cheering on serial adulterer Donald Trump.

“Just shut up!” he said. “You are a disgrace! You are a disgrace for normalizing Donald Trump’s behavior!”

Scarborough said Graham’s attacks on Buttigieg were particularly obnoxious because he has been saying for years now that a president’s personal character isn’t important — only to say that it’s important again once he’s talking about a gay Democrat.

“These evangelical leaders, they are now using their positions to gain political power and apologize for Donald Trump!” he thundered. “Now suddenly Franklin Graham’s talking about lifestyles and sinning, and a guy who has gone through a very difficult personal journey to figure out who he really is, he’s criticizing them for that?”

[LFC]

They've found a new way to attack those evil homos; through their children.

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No parent can ever be fully prepared for the arrival of a new baby. But when Roee and Adiel Kiviti brought home their newborn daughter Kessem two months ago, they figured that they were as ready as they could be. After all, they’d gone through the same process two years earlier with their son Lev, who, like Kessem, was born with the help of an egg donor and a gestational surrogate in Canada.

“It was as straightforward as one can imagine,” Roee told The Daily Beast, recalling the ease of bringing Lev home in late 2016, the infant’s newly printed Canadian passport in hand, soon to be supplanted by an American one. But this February, when Kessem’s fathers contacted the U.S. consulate in Calgary to obtain a Consular Report of Birth Abroad for their daughter—the legal equivalent of a birth certificate for Americans born outside of the United States—something was different this time.

“They first indicated that they needed proof of our marriage, which I found quite odd,” Roee said. “They needed the original marriage certificate, which we didn’t have with us, but I didn’t actually think anything more about it. I thought, ‘We don’t have time for this, we’ll just deal with it in the U.S.’”

Roee and Adiel obtained Kessem’s Canadian passport—a stopgap, they figured, until they could get her U.S. passport back home—and traveled back to their home in the United States.

But Kessem was about to become the latest victim of a government policy that effectively de-recognizes her parents’ marriage, granting her no automatic rights to American birthright citizenship despite the fact that both her fathers are U.S. citizens. That policy, Kessem’s fathers told The Daily Beast, poses a unique threat to LGBT families, and could change the decades-old legal understanding of what the word “family” even means.

“This is a very clear attack on families, on American families,” Roee, who married Adiel in California in 2013, told The Daily Beast. “Denying American married couples their rights to pass their citizenship, that is flat-out discrimination, and everyone should be concerned about this.”

[LFC]

This is a piece about a former right-wing climate change denier who woke up about a number of things. Here's what he was like when he headed to college.

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When he left home and went to college, Kaiser said, his views surged further to the right. “I think it would be accurate to describe myself as kind of an Evangelical fundamentalist at the time.” Kaiser joined a conservative group called the Leadership Institute, which trains students to become effective in political engagement. “They would give us all kinds of stuff for how to talk about climate change,” he recalled, “in a way that advances the agenda of the political right.”

This part speaks volumes. Knowledge is dangerous to these people. People who actually know things are much harder to control.

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By the time Kaiser was part way through his PhD program in history at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, his views began to shift. He was in his late 20s, and his education and exposure to details of American history led to eventual initial cracks in his hardline stance. “There were things that were part of my fundamentalist upbringing that I questioned,” he said.

“You’ve probably followed the polling that says that the majority of Republicans are now fearful that advanced education is dangerous,” he said. “And I think my experience is kind of what they fear.”

“Looking back, I think the very first issue that got me moving away [from a conservative viewpoint], was the debate about gay marriage. That was the one where I got fed up with a lot of the people I knew on the right. And then I got angry about the drug war debates. And that got me fed up even more with people on the right. And it was just kind of like this snowball rolling downhill that picked up steam. And I just kept finding all of these issues where I said, well now I’m seeing the evidence points this way, but I had believed the opposite.”

[AnBr]

Remember that Jefferson said that an educated electorate was vital to a functioning democracy.

[D. C. Sessions]

golden_valley, on 17 April 2019 - 05:34 PM, said:

Are we hitting a turning point in the concept of civil discourse with Bettigieg's calling out of those who think like Pence and Omar's saying essentially I am not going to go around apologizing for being Muslim because the attackers of 9/11 were Muslim? No more playing nice by ignoring wrongs, ducking down in an attempt to prevent someone from noticing that we are gay or Muslim, and hoping that aggressors will be shamed enough by our good manners that they'll give up persecuting us.

You mean no more tone trolling? No more, "well, yes you're technically right and they shouldn't be shooting people like you in the streets but you really should consider the feelings of those who agree with the shooters?"

[D. C. Sessions]

AnBr, on 17 May 2019 - 09:32 PM, said:

Remember that Jefferson said that an educated electorate was vital to a functioning democracy.

Exactly -- and right now "the quiet parts" are people on the right saying that democracy has to go. Not that the logic is any news to us; that's been obvious for a long, long, time. It's just that now they're facing up to it themselves.