You can certainbly disagree with what Michele Bachman believes about gay people. As a proud openly gay man, I know you don’t choose to be gay and I don’t believe you can’t pray the gay away. As a man who married his partner of almost 10 years in a legal ceremony in DC, I don’t believe that same-sex marriage is a threat to traditional marriage.
Having followed Congresswoman Bachmann’s career, I am certainly troubled by things she has said and by things she has been purported to have said. However, the attacks on Michele Bachmann and her family by the gay left have absolutely nothing to do with gay rights. In fact, these attacks have little to do with Congresswoman Bachmann or what her or her husband believes. The truth is that they are nothing more than part and parcel of an orchestrated effort by the left to destroy the Tea Party.
For two years now, the left, along with their enablers in the main stream media, have attempted to smear the Tea Party as racist, sexist, xenophobic and homophobic. These attacks on Congresswoman Bachmann are just the latest front in the left’s unending war against the Tea Party.
We have seen these attacks against other Tea Party favorites – from Sarah Palin to Herman Cain. In a few weeks, if Texas Governor Rick Perry joins the race for President, we can expect to see the same attacks leveled against him.
The left despises everything the Tea Party movement has come to exemplify – a powerful grassroots movement that has put shrinking the size and scope of the federal government firmly in its crosshairs. Unlike the establishment GOP, which the left dislikes but can do business with, the Tea Party refuses to compromise when it comes to those issues that matter most to limited government conservatives.
Most of all the left hates and fears the Tea Party’s central message – that the way forward in this country is less government interference in our lives, not more. This message, which has resonated with tens of millions of Americans, including many gay and lesbian Americans, undermines the basic premise of liberalism: that we are all victims, who are all powerless to defend ourselves, and that the only one that can protect us is the government.
Lets be honest, to succeed as a political philosophy liberalism needs victims and no movement has done more to put the left’s victim factory out of business than the Tea Party.
“For two years now, the left, along with their enablers in the main stream media, have attempted to smear the Tea Party as racist, sexist, xenophobic and homophobic. These attacks on Congresswoman Bachmann are just the latest front in the left’s unending war against the Tea Party.”
So, are you saying that Congresswoman Bachman (head of the Tea Party Caucus) isn’t homophobic? And if so, on what grounds do you justify this?
[...] a blog post earlier this week, Chris Barron of GOProud took it upon himself to enlighten the rest of us as to [...]
When confronted with gay Republicans, liberals face cognitive dissonance because in their world view they believe they themselves are morally superior to all because only they care about the less fortunate and the victims, which they believe to include homosexuals. Likewise, they see their opponents, the Republicans and conservatives, as the oppressors and bullies who hurt the unfortunate and inflict pain on the victims, all while only caring about themselves.
It is therefore understandable why liberals react with such vitriol to the idea of legitimate gay Republicans. It is not simply because they disagree with them, its that the very existence of a gay Republican, or “victim oppressor”, threatens a liberal’s entire core belief structure and sense of being..
Quite simply gay Republicans, by being alive and seemingly content, totally undermine a liberal’s self-ascribed moral supremacy, a no doubt major component of their self esteem, It should be no surprise then that when facing a threat to their emotional underpinnings that certain liberals lash out with inappropriate hysteria and hatred at the individual or group posing that threat. It is no longer a political argument, it is now a desperate, and often viscous, fight for their life by the liberal to defend their very own self worth.
Such fights cannot have a winner because they are not political discourse but rather one sided emotional meltdowns.
@intogy, I have tried to understand your argument, but I can’t get by the underlying premise that there are no ‘victim oppressors’. Clearly, there are. Roy Cohn springs to mind. A closeted gay man, he spent years helping Joseph McCarthy purge gay people from the U.S. government. Clearly this man is an oppressor. This doesn’t challenge my belief structure. Actually, it makes sense that a society that teaches children that being gay is a bad thing would warp some of those children into being oppressors themselves.
Likewise, Michelle Bachman’s husband is living as a closeted gay man (or at the minimum, a very effeminate one) while telling other gay men that they need ‘curing’. The Bachmans own the clinic together, and so she is as culpable for what goes on there as her husband In addition, Ms. Bachman’s political career has been built on a foundation of attacking gay people. To ignore this would be disingenuous at best. A President of the United States should be the President for all Americans. Clearly, Ms. Bachman has shown that she would not be a president for gay Americans.
Well, thanks for saying “certain liberals lash out with inappropriate hysteria” as opposed to saying “anyone who’s not a conservative”.
Frankly, I don’t care if Michelle Bachmann runs on the Tea Party, Republican, or Independent ticket. She thinks that I can ‘pray away’ my homosexuality, and she supports a constitutional amendment which would trump states’ decisions on same-sex marriage. It’s not something she is “purported” to have said, and my objection has everything to do with gay rights.
This is not an emotional argument; being able to marry my partner for ten year won’t make me love him more. It is based on getting access to the 1,000 or so rights (legal, financial, etc) that, unlike Mr. Barron, I cannot get here in Michigan. And any candidate–Republican, Democrat, Green, whatever–who supports an amendment like the one Bachmann describes does not deserve the vote of any lgbt American.
Following up: On “Meet The Press”, Bachmann was asked if a gay couple who adopted a child would be considered a family. Did she answer the question? No. She reiterated her “marriage=one man + one woman” position, and then that question is “not what people are concerned about now.”
My partner and I have no plans to adopt, but I’d hate to think the gay and lesbian couples I know who are parents would not be considered ‘families’–with implications to benefits–under Bachmann’s rule.
But, gosh, our taxes might be lower!