Wayne Besen - Author, Activist, Columnist, Public Speaker

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

(Weekly Column)

As luck would have it, Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement couldn't have come at a better time for embattled Senator George Allen (R-Va.). Having just learned of his Jewish lineage, he has an unexpected chance to wash away his impressive array of sins.

Overnight, Allen went from a rising star in the Grand Old Party, to a man who looked like he was running for Grand Wizard. First, he referred to a young Indian-American as "macaca" a few weeks ago. Now, he is accused by two acquaintances of using the N-word in the 1970's and 1980's.

Allen strenuously denies the allegations and has trotted out character witnesses to say he is the second coming of Malcolm X. But, his defense might seem more plausible if he had spent his adolescence collecting baseball cards, instead of confederate flags and nooses. He was also nicknamed "neck" during college - as in "redneck," which certainly isn't going to earn him any "trust me" points from the NAACP.

I don't expect this controversy will help Allen win reelection over Democratic Senatorial candidate James Webb. These days, even racists are expected to use code words instead of the N-word, and unlike Allen, at least Mel Gibson can claim he was drunk when he made his offensive remarks against Jews.

It seems that a decade of conservative rule has eroded basic rules of civility. What used to be called mutual respect is now derisively dismissed as "political correctness." Social conservatives now feel unrestrained and increasingly believe they are entitled to say whatever they want, no matter how obnoxious, hurtful or offensive.

For example, Dr. Gerald Schoenewolf, a "Scientific Advisory Board" member of the National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), wrote an essay on the group's website sympathizing with slavery.

"With all due respect, there is another way, or other ways, to look at the race issue in America. It could be pointed out, for example, that Africa at the time of slavery was still primarily a jungle, as yet uncivilized or industrialized. Life there was savage, as savage as the jungle...those brought to Europe, South America, America, and other countries, were in many ways better off than they had been in Africa."

The National Black Justice Coalition responded with a powerful letter demanding that NARTH repent:

"In the name of propriety, respect, common decency and professional integrity, the National Black Justice Coalition strongly urges NARTH to issue a public apology on the front page of its website for publishing such an outrageous and offensive article," wrote H. Alexander Robinson CEO/Executive Director in the group's letter.

The ex-gay group Exodus International got into the ethnic profiling game this week by claiming Thai students become hookers because of "materialism."

"College students in Bangkok become prostitutes to earn money to buy brand name clothes and accessories in order to be well accepted by friends," an Exodus affiliated ministry, Beyond Imagination, stated in its Fall newsletter.

Exodus should understand better than most that poverty is the root of prostitution. Executive Director Alan Chambers, for instance, turned his struggling organization into a million dollar industry by pimping it out to Focus on the Family. Exodus, a onetime Christian group, seems to spend more time engaged in politics than prayer.

In a crowded field for "bigot of the week," Rev. Dwight McKissic of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Texas, earned first runner up. At the Values Summit in Washington, the black preacher blasted the gay rights movement as "insulting, offensive, demeaning, and racist" (Did he forget anything?) Gays, he bellowed, should not "compare their sin to my skin."

(I must confess, I am somewhat relived that McKissic came up with a good anti-gay catch phrase. I can't be the only one who thinks the "Adam and Steve" line was getting a tad stale.)

However, the grand prize belongs to Georgia minister Wellington Boone. At the same Values Voter Summit, he announced,

"I want the gays mad at me...Back in the days when I was a kid, and we see guys that don't stand strong on principle, we call them 'faggots.'...People] that don't stand up for what's right, we say, 'You're sissified out!' 'You're a sissy!' That means you don't stand up for principles."

The next month is not for the feint of heart, as desperate Republicans will throw red meat to the base to avoid defeat and disgrace. With nothing positive to run on, they will try to win by scaring people into running away from homosexuals. But as these zealots feel more liberated to speak their minds, the rhetoric becomes more mind-boggling and the speaker's seem more mindless than ever before.

19 Comments:

As bad as it is to hear the uneducated rant and rave about how "our sin" should not be compared to "his skin", this is a real sign of progress. As much of this great country makes progress towards realizing its ideals when it comes to gay and lesbian people, it is only logical that homophobia will increasingly tend to come from the ignornat, uneducated, bigoted, psychologically-challenged crowd. Mainstream America is moving away from homophobia, and it is now a prejudice that is relegated to the unstable. As for comparing "my sin" to "his skin", I invite the black preacher to compare his neighborhoods with ours. Indeed, there is simply no comparison.
posted by Anonymous, at 9/27/2006 12:02 PM

At least they're all showing their true colors now and I dont mean their 'skin'. I think progessives and any other thinking persons with a conscience are totally fed up with the high crimes and misdemeanors of the bush administration. We saw this in Bill Clinton's barely contained rage at Chris Wallace during his interview on fascist fox news. Since 2000, liberals AND moderates alike, have felt like the battered wives and children of the republican right wingnuts, coming home every night drunk with power. But beware in November GOP, the 'burning bed' is coming!
Gary (NJ)
posted by Anonymous, at 9/27/2006 3:37 PM

Have anybody seen that skit on the Chappelle Show when Dave portrayed a blind black bigot who joined the Klan? That's how I felt about Dwight McKissic and Wellington Boone...as well as Jesse Lee Patterson, Alan Keyes, Ken Hutcherson, and the late (Bigotry Hall-of-Famer) Reggie White.

Blood From Machines
San Diego, CA
posted by Anonymous, at 9/27/2006 7:15 PM

i love that sketch. It's so hilarious and so uncomfortable. It hurts me truly that a preacher of any race can be such a disgusting bigot. I can only think that he is misguided, thinking only of our actions and not of our humanity. I hope, anyway.
posted by jekelhyde, at 9/27/2006 8:04 PM

What you're seeing here is the White Right Wing tapping into the deep anti-Gay sentiment that has existed in the Black church for years. Don't forget that African-Americans were mostly converted to Christianity in the South by White conservative preachers. They went on to develop their own culturally-based theology, but unfortunately, some of the bad doctrine they got from Massa they never let go of.

The scuttlebutt is that beaucoups of money are changing hands between the White Right and certain Black churches, so I'm not too surprised that the hateful rhetoric is being ratcheted up. I do feel ashamed, though, that these mouthy idiots are representing my community to millions of White conservatives, most of whom know next to zilch about Black history and culture.

Too many White Gay people, feeling threatened, have begun resorting to semi-racist rhetoric. I understand what motivates them to do this, but it's still wrong. Don't forget that there are Black Gay people, too, and more often than not they're on the front lines when this kind of bile gets spouted in their communities.
posted by DC HAMPTON JACOBS, at 9/28/2006 4:01 PM

Hmmm...and then Sen. Allen's democratic opponent Jim Webb is accused of this:

Cragg, 67, who lives in Fairfax County, said on Wednesday that Webb described taking drives through the black neighborhood of Watts, where he and members of his ROTC unit used racial epithets and pointed fake guns at blacks to scare them.

"They would hop into their cars, and would go down to Watts with these buddies of his," Cragg said Webb told him. "They would take the rifles down there. They would call then [epithets], point the rifles at them, pull the triggers and then drive off laughing. One night, some guys caught them and beat . . . them. And that was the end of that."

Cragg said Webb told him the Watts story during a 1983 interview for a Vietnam veterans magazine. Cragg, who described himself as a Republican who would vote for Allen, did not include the story in his article. He provided a transcript of the interview, but the transcript does not contain the ROTC story. He said he still remembers the exchange vividly more than 20 years later.
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