Although individual groups representing blacks, Hispanics, and women have called for stricter gun control measures in the past, none of them have carried enough clout at the polls to effect legislative change.  But what we just witnessed in this past general election is a game changer.

[Updated: November 20, 2012. The NRA section below has been updated to include information from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence 'Meet the NRA' website].

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There are some solutions that could help curb the staggering loss of American life to gunfire.  Guns falling into the hands of those convicted of violent crime as well as the mentally-ill has clearly been a problem.  Such individuals can, at least in part, be identified through background checks.  Closing the ‘gun show loophole’ (that by-passes background checks) should reduce the number of guns falling into the wrong hands.  Not a perfect solution as a currently ‘law-abiding citizen’ may not stay that way.   And millions of mentally ill individuals are missing from the background check system; and who’s to say that an emotionally-stable individual will remain that way when dealing with life’s pressures.   But, none-the-less, still a workable solution that should produce some level of measurable benefit.

However, there is an issue for which there really has been no solution.  Those holding hateful ideological beliefs can legally arm themselves, as long as they don’t have an existing record that would prohibit them from doing so – and some of them have demonstrated the capacity to kill innocent people simply because of their race, ethnicity, religious belief, sexual preference and even gender (domestic violence).  ’Stand your Ground’ or ‘Shoot First’ laws, where only the shooter is left standing, makes a plea of self-defense by an extremist essentially a license to kill.

Behavioral Conditioning

Our behavior and habits are shaped by conditioning we receive during our lives.  We respond, often without even thinking, by the way we have been conditioned.  As an adjunct professor and Course Director for Leadership Development, I taught that personal and executive development is an introspective process.  It was Viktor Frankl, an Austrian born psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, who made the point that between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space we have the freedom to choose our response.  This was central to Steven Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Successful People” where he advocated for making conscious choices to break old habits from prior conditioning and form better and more productive ones.  I also used that principle in work I have done with foster children in showing them that they could make a conscious decision to break the cycle of abuse to which some of them had been exposed.

Regrettably, some individuals have been conditioned to hate and fear.  A point that Morris Dees makes in his book “A Lawyer’s Journey: The Morris Dees Story” is that there is no gene that makes one a racist – people are taught (conditioned) to hate.  And it is the mixing of guns with individuals who have been so conditioned where stimulus can lead to the devastating response of taking an innocent life simply because of what that person is.

This issue is ‘Gun Right’s’ fatal flaw.  It constitutes a threat to our country’s remarkable diversity through those who harbor hateful beliefs.  I submit that there has been no real solution to this issue as we do not deny access to guns based on ideology.  No solution, that is, until what we just witnessed in this past general election.

An Explosion of Anti-Government and Hate Groups

What is written here should not be construed as a statement that all individuals who harbor anti-government or hateful beliefs are prone to violent behavior.  But it is clear that there are, and will continue to be, those who have taken the step to terminate many innocent lives motivated by those beliefs.

Intelligence gathering by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has shown an explosive growth of the radical right in recent years.   This growth has been fueled by recent economic pressures, a proliferation of conspiracy theories such as government concentration camps and Sharia Law, the changing racial/ethnic demography of America, and our first African-American president who many on the far right view as an enemy to their country.

Over 1000 hate groups have been counted by SPLC, up from 602 in 2000, the rise being attributed to the successful exploitation of non-white immigration, president Obama’s election, and the economic recession.  Indeed, it was when the Great Depression hit Germany in the 1930′s that voice was given to far right extremism (fascism): marked by an ultranationalism (a reclaiming of the country that had been lost); defining those who fit and did not fit; portraying those who did not fit as the cause of problems, referring to them as vermin, cancers (or today, moochers and takers who want stuff?); and, ultimately “eliminationism” (a politics and a culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through suppression, exile and ejection, or extermination) – reviewed here.

Included in the list compiled by SPLC are anti-gay groups, anti-muslim groups, black separatist groups (that are but a sliver of the larger white ‘sovereign citizen’ ideology that had its roots in white supremacy and who believe they have no obligation to government), Christian Identity Groups, Ku Klux Klan Groups, Nativist Extremist Groups (that harass and confront individuals they suspect are undocumented immigrants), Neo-Confederate Groups, Racist Skinhead Groups, and White Nationalist Groups.  A graph of the growth of such organizations since 2000 is displayed below.  A link to an interactive map of the United States where such groups can be identified on a state by state basis can be found here.

But the truly stunning growth came from anti-government “Patriot”/militia movement that views the government as their primary enemy.  These groups formed in the mid-1990′s based on the perception of violent government repression of dissident groups at Ruby Ridge, ID in 1992 and near Waco, TX in 1993.   The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 is attributable to this movement which peaked a year after the incident and then rapidly declined.  But the movement was once again energized in 2008 with the economic recession and the appearance of Barack Obama as a presidential candidate.  The numbers of these groups rose from 149 in 2008 to 1,274 last year.  Of these, 334 were militias.  A state by state listing of these groups is provided here.  A graph produced by SPLC showing the meteoric growth of such groups is displayed below.

The loss of life from gunfire by those holding extremist views has been reviewed by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in a report entitled Guns and Hate: A Lethal Combination.  The document makes clear that it is not intended to provide a comprehensive accounting of all hate-related crimes and shootings, but provides a review of prominent events between July 1999 and June 2009.  Excerpting from the Executive Summary:

A protest at the University of Mississippi against the re-election of president Obama escalated into a crowd of about 400 people with shouted racial slurs.  An analysis of tweets containing racial slurs following Obama’s re-election was published in The Atlantic – although coming from many states, the highest incidence occurred in Alabama followed by Mississippi.  And no president has had his birth right as an American citizen questioned as has Barack Obama through the ‘Birther Movement’ (code for ‘he’s not one of us’).

This regrettable aspect of America is gamed and stoked for political advantage by the National Rifle Association (NRA) and conservative media.

NRA

The NRA “goes to great lengths (and spends a huge sum of money) to defend the right to bear arms.  It is opposed to virtually every form of gun control, including restrictions on owning assault weapons, background checks for gun owners, and registration of firearms” (ref).  This election cycle the organization spent over $1 million in political contributions, about $1.5 million in lobbying, and near $18 million in outside contributions.  And Republicans were the beneficiary of 90% of the political contributions.  But in accepting these contributions, these politicians are giving sway to the extremist positions and conspiracy theories propagated by the NRA that target American diversity.

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence has published a review of the NRA and extremists under part three of this report.  The NRA “has employed inflammatory and anti-government rhetoric that bears a chilly similarity to some of the language of the hate groups followed by spree killer Benjamin Smith, the Holocaust Museum shooter and other dangerous extremists”. The ‘over the top’ rhetoric of this organization caused president GHW Bush to give up his NRA membership.  The NRA “has viewed the Second Amendment as providing citizens, in the Constitution, with the means to maintain an insurrection against the government”.  This issue has also been considered by Josh Horwitz (Executive Director, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and Casey Anderson in Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrection Idea.  In that work it is argued that more guns do not equate to more freedom and that the insurrectionist idea constitutes a true threat to freedom in the United States.

NRA ties to extremism, racism, sexism and the gun industry has been reviewed by the Violence Policy Center (ref).  Additionally the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has created a Meet the NRA website that details numerous statements made by that organization’s leadership on the issues of race, women’s rights, and LGBT rights.  Some selected statements are excerpted below, and readers can view the full array of comments through the provided links.

NRA Leaders on Race:

In Vol. 12, No. 3 of Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries published in March 2004, Cooper wrote, “We note that there are those who object to our referring to Japanese as Nips. However, the Nips have no reticence about referring to me as a gaijin. I do not know why we have all suddenly become almost hysterically touchy.” Turning to the topic of “hyphenated Americans” (an early 20th century slur for Americans of foreign birth or origin), he added, “We were pleased to be singled out by some members of the New York City Council as one of the sort of evil person who sits on the board of directors of the National Rifle Association. I did not know any of those other people were listening, but I certainly enjoy following the lead of Theodore Roosevelt in disdaining hyphenated Americans, and thus preferring assimilation to diversity. I do wish these people would stand up and fight, as I relish this sort of thing, but I cannot swing at a target if I cannot see it.”

NRA Leaders on Women’s Rights

In an August 28, 2012 interview with The Hill, Blackwell made references to controversial remarks made by U.S. Representative Todd Akin (R-MO). On August 19, 2012, Akin commented on the issue of pregnancy induced by rape, stating, “It seems to be, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, it’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.” Later, Akin publicly stated that Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan had personally asked him to end his candidacyfor the U.S. Senate. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus also announced that even if Akin, who was trailing Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill in two recent polls, managed to pull even with her, “We’re not going to send him a penny.” Commenting on this imbroglio, Blackwell stated, “I think it was a mistake not to get the leaders in Missouri lined up before [GOP national leadership] went up and looked overly heavy-handed in the way they were pushing [Akin] … I’ve encouraged people at the Senatorial Committee to wait about five days and do a poll and see if things have stabilized. If things have, they might want to readjust. Senatorial committees can do anything. It is not as if some of the damage they’ve done can be papered over but they can reverse themselves on it.”

[Author’s note: In October of this year, well after Akin’s ‘legitimate rape’ comment, the NRA endorsed Akin as a US Senate candidate.

NRA Leaders on LGBT Rights

In an August 2007 letter to a constituent who asked about the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy concerning homosexuality, Craig wrote, “It is unacceptable to risk the lives of American soldiers and sailors merely to accommodate the sexual lifestyles of certain individuals.”

Conservative Media

And conservative media has been playing the ‘race card’ for conservative political gain.  Consider Glenn Beck, on Fox News before a national TV audience, stating that Obama has a “deep seated hatred for white people or the white culture” and openly called Obama a “racist”.  Or Bill O’Reilly on Fox News stating on election night that “The white establishment is now the minority” and with this country’s changing demographics that “It’s not a traditional America anymore”.  Or O’Reilly again in 2007 on the issue of immigration: “They want to break down the white, Christian power structure, which you’re a part (Senator John McCain), and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have”.  Or Rush Limbaugh playing on his radio show a song entitled “Barack the Magic Negro” during Obama’s candidacy for his first term; Obama was given Secret Service protection, in part, for threats on white supremacist websites.  And Limbaugh is no stranger to race baiting.  Media Matters compiled a list of what they considered to be Limbaugh’s 20 worst racial attacks on minorities in general and Obama specifically, including referring to Obama, who has a black father and white mother, as a Halfrican American.

This type of language reinforces bigotry and hatred that results in violence against minority groups.  And the mixing of hatred and extremism with guns has taken, and will continue to take, innocent lives.  The link between hate language and violence against Hispanics (and other groups such as LGBT’s) is one that the National Hispanic Media Coalition has explored.

Discussion

Politicians have been able to accept NRA contributions with impunity and oppose sensible gun control because there have been no political consequences.  And others fear political retribution from the NRA if they do not do the organization’s biding.  Although groups representing women, Hispanics, and African Americans have called for tighter gun regulation in the past, none of them individually have carried enough clout at the polls.  However, what we just witnessed in this recent general election is a game changer.

Although president Obama captured only 39% of the white vote (the lowest margin since Mondale in 1984), he won the election by winning 80% of the non-white electorate capturing 93%, 71%, and 73% of the African American, Hispanic, and Asian vote, respectively (ref).  But Obama’s campaign was more than just harnessing the power of demographic change.  It targeted key constituencies (under Operation Vote) that made up his coalition including African Americans, Hispanics, young voters and women (particularly those with college degrees).

This coalition struck down those holding extremist positions.  Women railed against “legitimate rape”, rape pregnancies being “a gift from God”, mandatory vaginal ultrasound prior to abortion, and  a young highly educated woman being called a “slut” and “prostitute” by Limbaugh for her congressional testimony regarding contraception.  Hispanics saw onerous immigration laws, profiling, and conservative opposition to the DREAM Act.  African Americans saw voter suppression tactics and gerrymandering that weakened their voice.  Although statistics were not found for LGBT’s, support from that group would likely be meager for a party whose national platform included bringing back DADT and banning same-sex marriage.  And this coalition was immune to excessive campaign spending; large sums of outside money spent in opposing Obama and supporting conservative senate candidates produced exceptionally meager return on the investment.

This same coalition could reshape the political landscape regarding gun control as they represent the groups who suffer most from gun violence.  And NRA campaign spending had little sway with this coalition as the millions the organization spent produced an exceptionally meager 0.81% return on investment .  Brady Campaign’s president, Dan Gross, noted that the NRA spent 88% of its federal independent expenditures in 7 races and their candidates lost in the presidential race and 6 key Senate races.

Polling has shown that Hispanics and blacks, the people most impacted by gun violence, want stricter gun laws.  Likely driven by increasing gun violence in Latin America, 86% of Latinos support mandating a background check on all gun sales.   And in addition to the violent acts blacks have suffered at the hands of extremists such as white supremacists, gun homicide has been cited as the leading cause of death among black teens.  And the youth vote, including young educated women, would be a powerful part of the coalition.  Data from the General Social Survey, summarized by the Violence Policy Center, shows that the decline in household gun ownership in America since the 1970′s is attributable, in part, to a lack of interest in guns by youth and the increase in single-parent homes headed by women – and gun violence statistics for women, as summarized by the Brady Campaign, are appalling.  Further, data analyzed by SPLC has shown that homosexuals are far more likely than any other minority in the United States to be victimized by violent hate crimes, and this group continues to be demonized through extremist hate language “often amplified by certain politicians”.

The coalition exists.  No doubt there are districts where this coalition would likely not be effective.  But, also little doubt that there are many where it would.  What will be critical is that the leader who drove this coalition in the general election, president Obama, step up and make gun control an issue in the 2014 mid-term elections.  And considering what this coalition pulled off in the general election, this issue should only help his party.  He has already stated his interest in seeing an assault weapons ban reintroduced.  But a reshaping of the political landscape and psyche by this coalition could produce a number of important legislative advances, such as closing the gun show loophole.

The time to begin organizing is now.  It will not be possible to prevent all gun violence in this country.  But with diligent groundwork, as was done in the general election, we can take the step to make our country safer and render those harboring hateful ideologies less dangerous.

I returned from Paris, France, to see that North Carolinians had voted to restrict the rights of a minority by approving a constitutional amendment that would make marriage between one man and one woman the only domestic legal union that would be valid or recognized by the state.  And with polling showing that 60% of North Carolinians did not understand the amendment, they also unwittingly approved an amendment with far reaching consequences to both same-sex and straight couples.

What follows is a largely similar piece to what was submitted to the Raleigh News & Observer as a letter to the editor.  As one of my letters regarding the amendment was recently published by the N&O (ref), this one likely will not be.  So I post it here.  I have included references in support of statements contained in the brief piece.  There is little doubt, as previously published (ref), that the driving force behind this amendment was religious objection to homosexuality; and that objection has now been incorporated into the state’s constitution.

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May 10, 2012

The American Psychological Association has affirmed that “same-sex sexual and romantic attractions, feelings, and behaviors are normal and positive variations of human sexuality regardless of sexual orientation identity” (ref).   And the American Psychiatric Association has affirmed that attempts to change homosexual behavior “are often guided not by rigorous scientific or psychiatric research, but sometimes by religious and political forces opposed to full civil rights for gay men and lesbians” (ref).  Yet our state will deny committed same-sex couples, and their families, rights currently afforded to them under a civil union?

Religious interpretation has, regrettably, all too often been used to relegate individuals to second-class citizenship.  The husband shall “rule over” the woman (Genesis 2).  As God placed the races on different continents it is proof that He never intended for them to mix (in justifying miscegenation law, Loving’s criminal trial – ref).   And homosexuality is “abomination” (Leviticus).

Protect marriage?  It is high time that we protect one of our most cherished founding liberties, our First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free and civil government.  This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes”.  Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813.

Since September of last year I have published multiple articles in opposition to North Carolina’s constitutional amendment (Amendment 1) that would make marriage between one man and one woman the only domestic legal union that would be valid or recognized by the state.  These articles detail:

• the overtly religious underpinnings of the amendment,
• the debunking of the many unfounded fears and falsehoods that have been issued regarding same sex marriage,
• the Religious Right’s assault on our First Amendment’s Establishment Clause,
• the false claim of America being founded as a Christian nation,
• how politicians on the right have been manipulating bigotry for political gain,
• why the bible should not be considered an infallible source upon which to base law,
• our own history showing the folly of placing a minority’s rights to a vote, and
• how the amendment reinforces bigotry and false beliefs about the LGBT community when this minority is already more likely than any other in this country to be victimized by violent hate crime.

As the voting date for the amendment is approaching, I put together a compilation of this work in the hopes that it could be useful.  For those who wish, feel free to disseminate articles of interest through your social networking tools or other means.

In Defense of Same Sex Marriage

“A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some.”  US Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun.  The article explores the overtly religious underpinnings of the amendment as well as our own history showing the folly of putting a minority’s rights to a vote.

The Common Denominator of Right Wing Policy: Lost Lives

Politicians on the political right continue to pursue multiple areas of policy despite the well-documented, often substantial, and unnecessary loss of American lives associated with those policies.  Although not exclusively dedicated to LGBT rights, a section describes NC’s Amendment 1 lending credence to the many unfounded fears and falsehoods about the LGBT community that contributes to lost lives either directly through acts of violence or by suicide following unrelenting bullying and ostracization.

Calling Them Out By Name

With the Tea Party and the Christian Right rapidly losing ground in public opinion, Republican Politicians have to walk a fine line in motivating an important element of their base without alienating the middle.  But when prominent politicians, for political purposes, lend their support to a summit backed by entities whose lies and language foster hate crimes against a segment of our citizenry, it is time to call them out.  By their stature and mere presence, these politicians have given sanction to bigotry and assistance to persecution thus betraying their duty in governance.

Job Creation and Discrimination Just Don’t Mix

In defending their tax policies that largely benefit the wealthiest, Republican leadership claims that it is protecting our ‘job creators’.  However, Republican legislators certainly paid no heed to dozens of job creating CEOs who expressed their opposition to discriminatory legislation that could only negatively affect economic growth and job creation. Although Tea Party elected officials may say that their focus is on smaller government, recent research has shown that the rank and file of that movement are more concerned about social conservatism, especially a desire to see religion play a prominent role in government.

Under Attack By The Religious Right: Our Establishment Clause

The NC Constitutional Amendment that would prohibit same-sex unions is more than a civil rights matter.  It represents nothing short of an assault by the Religious Right on one of our most cherished founding liberties, that of religious freedom through the separation of church and state by our First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.  This article further explores the false claim that America was founded as a Christian Nation, and examines whether the Bible should be considered an infallible source upon which to base law.

Sponsor of Constitutional Amendment: “We Need to Get [Homosexuals] to Change Their Lifestyle to the One We Accept”

Regarding the proposed NC Consitutional Amendment that would ban same sex marriage, the following statement by the NC Senate Deputy President Pro Tempore, a physician, was published in the press: “We need to reach out to them [homosexuals] and get them to change their lifestyle back to the one we accept”.  I issued a response to him with copy to multiple legislators in the General Assembly.

Banning Same Sex Marriage: An Agenda of Hatred, Ignorance and Political Manipulation

A proposed amendment to the NC state constitution banning same-sex marriage is coming before a special legislative session.  When the religious objections are removed, as is required in civil matters, what is left is simply hatred borne of ignorance and political manipulation

“A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some.”  US Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun

When the many unfounded fears and falsehoods surrounding same-sex unions are stripped away, as was done in California’s Prop 8 trial (Perry v Schwarzenegger) by the testimony of 17 expert witnesses (ref), what is left is largely religious-based objections to homosexuality.  My opinion has been, and remains, that efforts to enact law based on interpretation of religious scripture is nothing short of an assault on one of our most cherished founding liberties, that of religous freedom as expressed in our First Amendment’s Establishment Clause (ref).

How important was this concept to the framers of our constitution?  That clause is contained in the very first sentence of the very first amendment in our Bill of Rights (ref).  And our ‘founding fathers’ were well aware of the persecution that occurred in Europe when church and state united.  Although it was religious persecution resulting from that union that drove many to the shores of colonial America, it was also, oddly enough, something that was being reproduced here as 9 of our 13 colonies adopted their own church (as recounted in Holmes’ work, The Faiths of the Founding Fathers).  Religious freedom did not occur in these United States until it was incorporated into our constitution in 1791 (ref).

In North Carolina, an amendment to the state’s constitution, Amendment 1, is being put to a vote on this May’s primary ballot.  This amendment states that the only domestic legal union that will be valid or recognized in the state would be a marriage between one man and one woman.  The broad implications of this amendment on the rights of unmarried couples, both same-sex and opposite-sex, has been discussed by UNC law professor Maxine Eichner (ref) and echoed by others as well (ref).

Our history has shown the folly of placing a minority’s rights to a vote.  Consider that women’s suffrage was voted down by NJ voters in 1915, 58% to 42% (ref).  And further consider in 1967 (when the US Supreme court struck down miscegenation law in Loving v Virgina) that 72% of the public opposed interracial marriage and 48% felt that marrying a person of another race should be prosecuted as a criminal offense (ref).  In ruling on Loving v Virginia the court declared “Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man’, fundamental to our very existence and survival..” (ref).  And Judge Vaughn Walker (a Reagan/GHW Bush nominee), who presided over California’s Prop 8 trial stated:  “That the majority of California voters supported Proposition 8 is irrelevant, as fundamental rights may not be submitted to [a] vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections”; his ruling that Prop 8 violated the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment has been upheld by a federal appeals court (ref).

As was recently reported in the press, the Amendment 1 campaigns are intensifying as the voting date approaches (ref).  In that article a pastor tells his congregation that they must vote for the amendment or face God’s anger and judgement; that his congregation must denounce “sexual sins” and decide if they are for “righteousness or wickedness”.  And how is that not ‘Get Out The Vote’ activity to incorporate religious opinion into the state constitution?

In attempting to limit the rights available to a segment of our citizenry based on religious beliefs, it would be worthwhile to remember the words of US Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun (ref):

“When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion it conveys a message of exclusion to all of those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs.  A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some.”

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Note: Subsequent to the posting of this article, a letter to the editor was accepted for publication by the Raleigh News and Observer

Republican politicians catering to the Tea Party and the Religious Right, intersecting entities, have a fine line to walk.  With research showing that Tea Party supporters tended to be highly partisan Republicans well before there ever was a Tea Party (ref), this group represents an important part the Republican base, a base that Republican politicians need to keep energized and motivated.  However, on the other side of the coin, the Tea Party is rapidly losing ground in the world of public opinion (ref).   Polling this past summer showed that over a 14 month period public opposition to the Tea Party more than doubled from 18% to 40%.  Additionally, research on national political attitudes showed that out of 24 groups and individuals, the Tea Party finished dead last (24th) with Sarah Palin, the outspoken Tea Party advocate, finishing right behind at 23rd (ref).  The Tea Party finished lower in public opinion than much maligned groups such as Muslims (20th) and Gays (17th).  Additionally, as the above cited research also showed that (other being a Republican) the strongest predictor of becoming a Tea Party supporter was a desire to see greater involvement of religion in politics, it is not surprising that the Christian Right also scored well down in public opinion (21st).

So, there lies the dilemma for Republican politicians; how to energize an important part of their base without alienating/offending the middle (what they need to win elections).  And, as just occurred this weekend, some of this activity is kept a bit under the radar.

This weekend an event took place in Washington, D.C. called the Values Voter Summit (ref).  Unless one follows civil rights matters, one would know little of the groups that sponsored the event: the Family Research Council (FRC) and the American Family Association (AFA).  The event was attended by the ‘who’s who’ of the Republican Party (list of political participants will follow).

Both groups have been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as Hate Groups, not because of religious beliefs but because of their continuing use of hate language, discredited research, and malicious falsehoods that demonize the LGBT community.  Claims made by these groups include such things as gay rights advocates want to “recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order”; that gays orchestrated the Holocaust and were responsible for the killing of 6 million Jews; and that homosexuality is an illness that can be cured.  Should you wish to see the nature of information issued by these groups I provide the link to an advertisement placed by SPLC in the Washington Post that provides both statements and references (ref).  Should one wish to review the top 10 Anti-Gay Myths and how they have been debunked, you can find them at this link (ref).

The problem with the language and falsehoods these groups issue is that it reinforces bigotry and hatred thus contributing to hate crimes.  Analysis of FBI data has shown that homosexuals are far more likely than any other minority group in the United States to be victimized by violent hate crimes (ref).

The LGBT community are citizens of the United States and are thus entitled to protection against bigotry, hatred, bullying that leads to suicide of our youth, and assault.  As cited in a previous article (ref), our first president issued the following words, “…the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance…” (ref).   Regrettably, the prominent politicians who participated in this event, by their stature and mere presence, have given sanction to bigotry and assistance to persecution for their own political purpose.  And what purpose?  One need look no further than the cause of the anger behind Occupy Wall Street movement to understand that.  So the time has come to stop this manipulation of bigotry and hatred for political and financial gain.  Until we call this out, that Party will continue to manipulate this part of its base to carry out its agenda.

It is time to bring these prominent politicians ‘out of the closet’ so to speak.  The intent of the Washington Post ad placed by SPLC was to get public officials to think twice before lending their names to groups like FRC and AHA again.  However, the ad failed to mention these politicians by name; they were essentially given a bye with the public.  I will provide those names here as well as the link that identifies all confirmed participants (ref).  My belief is that these individuals need to explain to the other 70% of America their participation in a summit backed by groups whose language fosters violent crimes against a segment of our citizenry.

Over ten years ago one of our sons almost lost his life during a vicious after-hours assault near his college campus.  The assailants were sent to prison.  One of the assailants during the criminal trial claimed he wasn’t directly involved.  The district attorney issued the following statement: “If you run with the pack, you are responsible for the kill”.

Confirmed Speakers (Politicians)

John Boehner (R-OH) – House Speaker

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) – House Majority Leader

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) – Presidential Candidate

Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY)

Herman Cain – Presidential Candidate

Newt Gingrich – Former Speaker of the House and Presidential Candidate

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO)

Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA)

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)

Rep. Steve King (R-IA)

Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) – Presidential Candidate

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) and Presidential Candidate

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS)

Mitt Romney – Former MA Governor and Presidential Candidate

Rick Santorum (R-PA) – Former US Senator

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL)

Former Rep Linda Smith (R-WA)

Due to my recent  activity in opposing a NC constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex unions (marriage or any other form), I have been asked on more than one occasion if I am gay.  I am actually in my second heterosexual marriage having raised four children between us.  So what’s my beef with the NC constitutional amendment?  Quite simply, two things: 1) it restricts a civil right of a minority group; and 2) it represents an assault on one of our most cherished founding liberties, religious freedom as expressed in our constitution’s First Amendment Establishment Clause, that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion’ (ref).

Regarding civil rights,  NC lawmakers would be writing discrimination into the state constitution.  The US Supreme Court has already declared marriage to be a civil right in unanimously striking down miscegenation law (Loving vs Virginia).  The court declared: “Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man’, fundamental to our very existence and survival…To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statues, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the 14th Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law” (ref).  As has been the case with objections to same-sex unions (discussed below), religious opinion (invoking God’s view) was central to prohibiting interracial marriage.  In the criminal trial of the Lovings,  Judge Leon Bazile suspended the felony conviction against them upon the condition they leave the state. He stated “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents.  And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages.  The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix”.

Judge Vaughn Walker, who presided over the Proposition 8 trial in California (Perry vs Schwarzenegger), ruled after considering testimony from multiple expert witnesses that prohibiting same-sex unions also violated the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment (ref).  The reasons for denying such a union on a civil level were shown to be every bit as discriminatory and ill-founded as those that attempted to restrict marriage based on racial classification.  In both cases, Loving vs Virginia and California’s Proposition 8, the prohibitions amounted to nothing more than discrimination directed at a segment of our citizenry.

Regarding the First Amendment concerns, make no mistake about it, what drove this constitutional amendment was fundamentalist Christian objections to homosexuality.  There is Ron Baity of Return America (ref), the group behind the campaign to pass the amendment, agreeing with conservative radio talk show host Janet Parshall that Satan’s attack on marriage must be stopped (ref).  Bill Brooks, president of the NC Family Policy Council to a group of around 3500 Christians at a rally that “…anything other than marriage shared between a man and a woman goes against God’s design for creation (ref).”  Patrick Wooden, pastor of the Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh stated “This state has to protect God’s holy institution…We want to put one more lock on the door (ref).”  And NC Senator James Forrester (R), the Senate sponsor of the Amendment, referring to Asheville, NC (that has a LGBT community) as a “cesspool of sin”, a remark that led to the issuance of an apology by the mayor of Gastonia to Asheville (ref).  All too reminiscent of the type of language issued by Judge Bazile in the Lovings’ criminal trial.

And the fundamentalist religious theme behind the NC constitutional amendment was on display in the signs held by supporters of the amendment, examples of which follow and some being incredibly mean-spirited. (Note: it is unclear as to whether the third picture came out of NC, but was felt to be useful regarding the nature of religious-based public displays on the matter).

Anti-Gay Marriage Sign

Persecution is inherent to an intermingling of church and state, something that the framers of our constitution understood well in crafting the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment.  As Thomas Jefferson penned to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802: “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibit the free exercise thereof’, thus building a wall of separation between church and State” (ref).

I will further explore in this article the false claim that America was founded as a ‘Christian Nation’ by today’s Religious Right.  And, considering the amount of Christian scripture cited by proponents of the Amendment, I will also consider whether the Bible should be considered an authoritative source upon which to base law.

Christian Right: Know Thy History

I have written about the claim America was founded as a ‘Christian nation’ in two prior articles.  The first was an examination of the consistent language issued by Thomas Jefferson over many decades (ref).  In the other I discussed the origins of the Religious Right through the Evangelical movement and how that movement was but in its infancy during the period of time that our Constitution was written and ratified (ref).  David Holmes work, ‘The Faiths of the Founding Fathers’, (ref) will be a primary source for this section.  I will also draw from the previously mentioned Jefferson article.

The Religious Right of today are  a ‘Johnny Come Lately’ to the Constitution party.  Holmes points out that “none of the founding fathers knew anything of the churches that became so large in the United States in the 20th century – the Pentecostals (or charismatics) and the nondenominational evangelicals”.  The evangelical movement was in its infancy in the post-Revolutionary War years, having started in Georgia through the work of the Wesley’s, credited with founding the Methodist movement (highly disciplined and conversion oriented) and the charismatic evangelical preachings of George Whitefield.  Their work left the legacy of evangelical “born again” Christianity, and the Methodists and Baptists were its greatest heirs.  ”None of the founding fathers was an evangelical, although Madison did attend a moderately evangelical Episcopal church in the last years of his life.  In fact, James Monroe was offended by an evangelical sermon he attended during his presidential tour of 1817, and John Adams belonged to the anti-Great Awakening wing of Congregationalism..”.

The Southern Baptists, who separated from their Northern brethren in 1845 (ref), had their roots in the Puritan movement.  Puritans believed in a union of church and state for it was only through such a union that humans could produce a Christian society conformed to scriptural teachings. As Holmes notes, “Their goal was to produce a sober, righteous, and godly Christian society”.  And it is the tug of war between that perceived role of religion, and vision of the founding fathers who provided for a separation of church from state, that has been ongoing almost since the inception of this country.  And that Puritanical influence is apparent in the language and signs displayed by the pro-Amendment Christian crowd in NC.

Regarding the first five presidents, with the exception of George Washington (who later however became Chancellor at the College of William Mary) Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe were all educated at institutions of higher education during the Age of Enlightenment, a period that placed a high value on reason.  As such, it is not surprising that all were influenced by a religious outlook called Deism, an outlook that, as described by an American cleric “..is what is left of Christianity after casting off everything that is peculiar to it.  The Diest is one who denies the Divinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement of Christ, and the work of the holy Ghost; who denies the God of Israel, and believes in the God of nature.”  In the decades preceding the Revolutionary War, Enlightenment rationalism unseated Christian orthodoxy at Yale, Harvard and other denominational colleges.  They took exception to what they considered ‘artificial scaffolding’ that was built around Christ for the purpose of what Jefferson described as ‘pence and power’.  As Jefferson penned to John Adams in 1823: “And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter.  But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors”.  (As a note, the correspondence between Jefferson and John Adams on religion, morals, and values has been compiled in Bruce Braden’s work ‘Ye will say I am no Christian’, [ref], another recommended read).

Regarding Christianity during colonial times, there was a tremendous diversity of Christian sects along with mainstream churches; and individual colonies treated this diversity in different ways.  For example, Rhode Island for decades excluded Roman Catholics.  Maryland had a law on the books for a while, the ‘Maryland Toleration Act’, that pertained to Trinitarians, and those who blasphemed that Christian dogma could face execution or forfeiture of all lands. James Madison, a Virginian and the primary author of our Constitution, learned of the persecution and jailing of dissenters to the Church of Virginia (Anglican).  There were clear examples of Christians persecuting Christians in Colonial America, an aspect of Christian history that did not go unnoticed by Jefferson who penned in 1782: “Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.”

Jefferson considered The Virginia Act of Religious Freedom to be one of his greatest accomplishments.  As written in his autobiography about the crafting of that document, “Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting ‘Jesus Christ’, so that it would read ‘A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion’: the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination”.

So when one makes a claim that America was founded as a Christian nation, what sects or mainstream churches are they referring to?  Religious Freedom (“citizens are free to worship in any way or not at all – and that the state protects that freedom”) did not occur until the late 1780′s when our constitution provided for the separation of church from state with its First Amendment Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause.  Religious freedom in our country was born during a window of opportunity when Enlightenment rationality and Deist influences were at play.  And the assault on that freedom through the puritanical view of the Religious Right, whose influence came to bear largely after the ratification of the Constitution, jeopardizes one of our most precious founding liberties.

The Bible

As proponents of the Amendment have been citing much scripture as well as displaying pictures of the Bible, I want to consider whether that book should be viewed as an infallible source upon which to base common law.

“Priests…dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live”; words penned by Jefferson to Correa de Serra in 1820.  With the Bible being held by fundamentalist Christians as the inerrant (incapable of being wrong) word of God, there is much we now know to be factually incorrect within the text.  We also know that prior to the printing press (which has accurately reproduced what is held by some scholars to be an inferior version of the text, the King James Bible), Biblical scripture underwent numerous changes over a period of many centuries at the hands of scribes.

Regarding Biblical views on creation, for example, we know that Earth was not the beginning of creation, that the earth did not precede the sun, that there was not a spontaneous creation of complex life along with one man who named all the animals (a monumental task), and that modern humans never bottle-necked down to a single couple.  Regarding the latter, DNA studies that allow us to trace both maternal (mitochondrial DNA) and paternal (Y chromosome) lineages, do identify a single male and female common to all of modern man (ref). However, they lived at different times, the female dating back about 200,000 years ago in East Africa and preceded the male (who was also probably in Africa) by perhaps 50,000 to 80,000 years.  And ‘mitochondrial Eve’ was not the only woman alive at the time; nuclear DNA studies indicate that the size of the ancient human population never dropped below tens of thousands.  ”In principle, earlier Eves can also be defined going beyond the species, for example one who is ancestral to both modern humanity and Neanderthals, or, further back, an ‘Eve’ ancestral to all members of genus Homo and chimpanzees in genus Pan.”  This draws into question as to how the Downfall of Man in the Garden of Eden could have ever occurred.  Man’s downfall at the hands of Satan posing as a serpent is a central tenet held by the Christian Right in that we are born into this world as sinners from the act of the first human couple and require salvation.

On a related issue, there is also the belief that a human being forms at the time of conception and inherits a soul carrying the sin of our original parents; no small matter as it is central to some religious opinion on the abortion debate.   Yet we know from studies of reproductive biology that 60 to 80 percent of all conceptions, an estimated half of them believed to be normal, are lost in menstrual flows each month (ref).  Would a compassionate Creator have designed a reproductive system that would deny so many innocents the opportunity for salvation?  And there is the issue of Chimera (ref), individuals who form early on from the fusion of two separate conceptions thus creating a singular human with a mix of tissues.  If a soul is incorporated at the time of conception, would these individuals have two souls, and if not on what basis?  It indeed is difficult to align elements of biblical text and other religious dogma with what we have learned.

“The whole of these books (the Gospels) is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it; and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine.  In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds.  It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills”.  Words Jefferson penned to John Adams in 1814.  And quite insightful as has been shown by studies of the text.

Textual criticism (the science of restoring the ‘original’ words of a text from manuscripts that altered them) has shown that there are more documented changes to scripture than there are words in the New Testament (Bart Ehram’s work “Misquoting Jesus” (ref), a recommended read on the topic).  Ehram, who was raised as an Evangelical Christian, chairs the department of religious studies at UNC Chapel Hill.  The alterations noted in scripture are the result of many centuries of manual copying by scribes who either made mistakes or intentionally changed or added passages to address contradictions or suit individual beliefs.  Many changes are minor, some are not.  A couple of examples.  The story of the woman taken in adultry (let ye who are without sin cast the first stone) is not found in earlier versions of the text.  Neither are the last 12 verses of Mark that are used by Pentacostal Christians to show that Jesus’s followers will be able to speak in unknown “Tongues”.  Both were incorporated by scribes many centuries later.  Were these scribes all subject to Devine Guidance with these additions to scripture?  There are many other examples as well such as the concept of the Trinity (an alteration of the word ‘who’ to ‘God’ in the Greek language?) and Joseph as the father of Christ.

If this text is held to be the inerrant word of God, let that remain a matter of faith, rather than viewing it as a factual source upon which common law can be based.  There are many fine teachings in the Bible, most notably Matthew’s account of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount where Christ bestowed his blessings on the merciful, the poor, the peacemakers, and others.  However, as was pointed out by law professor Gene Nichol in his article ‘Nailing Religious Tenets to the Classroom Wall’ (ref): “Is it possible that this central, unyielding, perfect statement of Christian philosophy [the Sermon on the Mount] is tougher to square with the actual agenda of the American political Right?”

Discussion

There is no doubt the NC Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex unions is a civil rights matter, for discrimination against a minority group would be written into the state constitution.  However, the driving force behind this amendment, religious opinion about homosexuality being a sin and a perversion of God’s creation, represents nothing short of a frontal assault on one of our most cherished founding liberties, religious freedom through a separation of church and state as expressed in our First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses.  Considering the history of American Christianity in the immediate post-Revolutionary War period, unless today’s Religious Right wishes to change our constitution, religious belief belongs in the church and not as part of legislation. “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law” as Jefferson penned to Dr. Thomas Cooper in 1814.  And frankly, the use of scripture to demonize a segment of our population because of who and what they are is offensive and could hardly be considered Christian.

So, during this period of ultra-conservative politics that mingles church and state, this is a matter that has reach beyond NC.  It is a matter that can affect the freedom and liberty of all citizens to worship and believe as they see fit (or not at all if that is their preference) and not be burdened in civil society by religious discrimination.

In leaving the Legislative Building in Raleigh prior to the Senate vote, I couldn’t help but think of the words issued by our first president, George Washington (ref): “…the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance…”.  Indeed appropriate words for legislators in NC as well as other states to remember.

Should anyone wish to send their opinion of this Amendment to legislators, I provide the following e-mail addresses: Senator Forrester  James.Forrester@ncleg.net, Senate President Pro Tempore Phil.Berger@ncleg.net, House Speaker Thom.Tillis@ncleg.net, Speaker Pro Tempore  Dale.Folwell@ncleg.net, House Majority Leader Paul.Stam@ncleg.net

_________________

Senator Forrester:

I note that you are a physician.  I obtained my research degree at the Medical College University of Arizona and spent my career largely involved with clinical research studies of therapeutic agents, progressing to executive ranks in the pharmaceutical industry.

I came across a piece in the Gaston Gazette that reported on a meeting you attended and spoke at regarding the proposed NC constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage http://www.gastongazette.com/news/marriage-60684-state-one.html.  In that article the following statement is attributed to you:

“We need to reach out to them [homosexuals] and get them to change their lifestyle back to the one we accept”.

My belief is that you must have forgotten the medical dictum ‘First do no harm’, for the statement you made in public is reckless and may actually cause harm.

Both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association have taken positions that efforts to change sexual orientation have no scientific credibility and may cause psychological damage to patients.

The following is excerpted from the American Psychological Association’s Resolution on Appropriate Affirmative Responses to Sexual Orientation Distress and Change Efforts http://www.apa.org/about/governance/council/policy/sexual-orientation.aspx

From their Research Summary:

Although sound data on the safety of SOCE (Sexual Orientation Change Efforts) are extremely limited, some individuals reported being harmed by SOCE. Distress and depression were exacerbated. Belief in the hope of sexual orientation change followed by the failure of the treatment was identified as a significant cause of distress and negative self-image (Beckstead & Morrow, 2004; Shidlo & Schroeder, 2002).

From their Resolution

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, That the American Psychological Association affirms that same-sex sexual and romantic attractions, feelings, and behaviors are normal and positive variations of human sexuality regardless of sexual orientation identity;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Psychological Association reaffirms its position that homosexuality per se is not a mental disorder and opposes portrayals of sexual minority youths and adults as mentally ill due to their sexual orientation;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Psychological Association concludes that there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation;

Additionally the following is excerpted from the American Psychiatric Association’s position statement regarding Therapies Focused on Attempts to Change Sexual Orientation (Reparative or Conversion Therapies http://www.psych.org/Departments/EDU/Library/APAOfficialDocumentsandRelated/PositionStatements/200001a.aspx

1.     APA affirms its 1973 position that homosexuality per se is not a diagnosable mental disorder.  Recent publicized efforts to repathologize homosexuality by claiming that it can be cured are often guided not by rigorous scientific or psychiatric research, but sometimes by religious and political forces opposed to full civil rights for gay men and lesbians.  APA recommends that the APA respond quickly and appropriately as a scientific organization when claims that homosexuality is a curable illness are made by political or religious groups.

2.     As a general principle, a therapist should not determine the goal of treatment either coercively or through subtle influence.  Psychotherapeutic modalities to convert or “repair” homosexuality are based on developmental theories whose scientific validity is questionable.  Furthermore, anecdotal reports of “cures” are counterbalanced by anecdotal claims of psychological harm.  In the last four decades, “reparative” therapists have not produced any rigorous scientific research to substantiate their claims of cure.  Until there is such research available, APA recommends that ethical practitioners refrain from attempts to change individuals’ sexual orientation, keeping in mind the medical dictum to First, do no harm.

Sometimes it helps to put a face on the matter.  Robbie Kirkland was a 15 year old who was continually subjected to negative ‘homophobic’ social pressures regarding his sexual orientation.  He took a key from his father’s key chain, unlocked his father’s gun and put the keys back.  He climbed up to the attic where he lay down on a mattress.  Then he shot himself in the head.  The suicide note was found in a notebook at his mother’s.  “I am sorry for the pain I have put everyone through…I hope I can find the peace I couldn’t find in my life”.

Robbie Kirkland Picture

It is time that we stop discriminating against our diversity, for real lives are at play.  I ask that this legislature vote down the constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage.

One would have thought that this issue would have been laid to rest following California’s Prop 8 trial, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, as recounted by Margaret Hoover, a conservative Fox News contributor, in her article, “My Fellow Conservatives, Think Carefully About Your Opposition to Gay Marriage” (ref).  One of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, Ted Olson, was a constitutional conservative who helped found the Federalist Society, was G.W. Bush’s Solicitor General, and successfully argued Bush v. Gore before the Supreme Court.  The judge, Vaughn Walker, was a Reagan/Bush nominee whose first nomination stalled in the Senate due to perceived insensitivity to gays (ref).  So the trial was not stacked in ‘liberal’ California.  The plaintiffs brought seventeen expert witnesses to the stand in the fields of psychology, political science, economics, socio medical sciences and history.  Oddly, the lone two witnesses for the defense actually wound up providing evidence supporting the plaintiff’s case.  Olson and his Democratic legal partner, David Boies, successfully argued that Prop 8 violated the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, and is unconstitutional.  The judge ruled: “That the majority of California voters supported Proposition 8 is irrelevant, as fundamental rights may not be submitted to [a] vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”

Yet, despite the overwhelming scientific/medical/social/legal information debunking the fears about, and objections to, same sex marriage (and how such a ban is actually harmful), Prop 8 is once again returning to court (ref).  And the NC legislature is attempting to place such a restriction into the state’s constitution.  The usual suspects are at work again in NC: the damaging falsehoods about the LGBT community disseminated by hate groups; the actions of the Religious Right; and the manipulation of ignorance and hatred by politicians for political gain.

Hate Groups

NC House Majority Leader, Paul Stam (R), appeared this past week on American Family Association (AFA) radio with AFA’s president Tim Wildmon and the Family Research Council’s (FRC) president Tony Perkins.  The broadcast exchange is provided at this link (ref).  Both AFA and FRC have been categorized as ‘hate groups’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) (ref).  To be clear, this categorization is based on “propagation of known falsehoods – claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities – and repeated, groundless name-calling. Viewing homosexuality as unbiblical does not qualify organizations for listing as hate groups”.

A sampling of some claims issued by these organizations follow.

Perkins, on TV, defended FRC’s false accusation associating gay men with pedophilia (ref), i.e. that gays are sexually predatory with children.  The American Psychological Association, amongst others has concluded that “homosexual men are not more likely to sexually abuse children than heterosexual men are” (ref).  Additionally, in response to the “It Gets Better” anti-bullying campaign, Perkins has asserted that children are being recruited into that ‘lifestyle’, additionally referring to LGBT identities as “perversion”, “immoral”, and “disgusting”.  His claim that children can be “recruited” into homosexuality is disturbing because it is the same rhetoric that was used to support the Briggs initiative in 1978 to suggest that gays are predatory (ref) (ref).

AFA’s Bryan Fischer claimed that “homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews”. Further, he described Hitler as “an active homosexual” who sought out gays “because he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough” (ref) (ref).  (So, the raping of women by Nazis in ghettos and concentration camps as documented by the US Holocaust  Memorial Museum (ref) was carried out by those ‘vicious and brutal and savage’ gays)?

The dangerous aspect of such language is that homosexuals are far more likely than any other minority group in the United States to be victimized by violent hate crime (ref).  Analysis of FBI data showed that homosexuals are 2.4, 2.6, 4.4, 13.8 and 41.5 times as likely as Jews, blacks, Muslims, Latinos and whites, respectively, to be the target of hate crimes.  Hate language, the dehumanization of individuals by the type of language issued by these organizations, is the ‘permission factor’ that reinforces bigotry and contributes to hate crimes.

It is this writer’s opinion that the House Majority Leader, by agreeing to appear with the leaders of these organizations as advocates for a ban on same sex marriage, has lent credence to these organizations and their poisonous language simply through the stature of his position.  I issued a communication of complaint to multiple members of the NC General Assembly on this matter.

The Religious Right

Right wing radio host Janet Parshall interviewed Ron Baity of Return America, the group behind the amendment campaign, on her show ‘In the Market’ (ref).  Regarding same sex marriage, Parshall stated that Satan had marriage in his ‘crosshairs’, and Baity agreed.

The perception of the Religious Right that America was founded as a Christian nation and is thus subject to law based on Christian scripture and beliefs, shows a poor understanding of the history of Christianity in this country.  A wonderful read on this topic is David Holmes’ (Walter G. Mason Professor of Religious Studies, College of William and Mary) ‘The Faiths of the Founding Fathers” (ref), the source that is primary to this section.  I believe a brief recounting of that history is important to the matter at hand.

The Evangelical movement, that eventually produced today’s Religious Right, had its beginnings in Georgia in the late 1730′s through two Anglican dons who were brothers, John and Charles Wesley.  The two formed the Methodist movement after a conversion experience.  A protege of theirs, George Whitefield, became one of the most dramatic and effective evangelists in the history of Christianity.  His audiences had to confront the terrorizing realization that they deserve damnation and could be saved from Hell only through the grace and forgiveness of God.  Until Methodism separated from Anglicanism in 1784, it remained in America as a small ultra-evangelical wing of the Church of England.  However, along with the Baptists, it represented the future of American Protestantism.

Religious influences on our first five presidents, and several of the founding fathers, were quite different from the developing evangelical movement.  Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe were Virginians, born and baptized in the Anglican Church known as the Church of England or the Church of Virginia.  After the Revolution, the word England was removed and in its place the term Episcopal (we have bishops) was used.  John Adams came from New England.  Although respectful of Christianity, they all developed Diest beliefs; they tended to deny the divinity of Jesus and a few even seemed to to have been agnostic about the very existence of God.  I provided a brief overview of Diesm and our founding fathers in a prior article (ref).

Christianity was hardly cohesive in colonial times.  Nine of the thirteen colonies adopted their own church, and Christians on occasion would persecute, jail, and seize the property of other Christians.  Madison, the primary author of the US Constitution, witnessed dissenters to the Church of Virginia being persecuted and jailed in his neighboring Culpepper County.  It was the mix of Diest beliefs and the persecution inherent with an intermingling of church and state that formed the basis for our constitutional separation of church and state and religious freedom in America.

The language on this matter is quite clear.  The establishment clause, the very first sentence in the First Amendment states that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion’ (ref).  There is the ‘no religious test’ clause of Article 6 that states ‘no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States’ (ref).  The words “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion” were part of a treaty written during the presidency of Washington, signed during the administration of John Adams, read aloud in Congress without a single dissenting vote, and published in the lay press without evidence of public dissent (ref). “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law”, penned by Jefferson in a letter Dr. Thomas Cooper in 1814 (ref).  ”History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free and civil government.  This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes”, also penned by Jefferson in 1813 (ref).

The proposed amendment banning same sex marriage is a civil matter, not a church matter.  Members of the Religious Right are free to marry and restrict marriage as they please within their own church.  But in a civil setting any biblical interpretations regarding same-sex relationships, of which there are very few, statements like ‘Satan has marriage in his crosshairs’, that gays are sinners, etc., are required to be sidelined during discussion of civil law.  That is, of course, unless those individuals wish to change the constitution upon which our country was founded.

Manipulation by Politicians

Politicians as well have manipulated ignorance and hatred for political gain.  House Majority Leader Stam has likened gay marriage to incest and polygamy (ref).  His words: “you cannot construct an argument for same sex marriage that would not also justify philosophically the legalization of polygamy and adult incest”.  The analogy is ill-founded.  Same sex marriage involves the decision of two consenting adults to enter into a formal and recognized union.  Polygamy involves the marriage of one individual to multiple individuals, and incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives.  All are quite separate concerns; the claim is one of mixing apples and oranges.

In the same interview, when asked how the ban would differ from miscegenation laws, Representative Stam responded that “People can’t change their race. People can’t choose their race”, implying that sexual preference is a choice. This false belief has led to attempts to ‘cure’ homosexuals and opens some very dark pages in history.  As documented in an exhibit by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (ref), the Nazi state, through active persecution, attempted to terrorize German homosexuals into sexual and social conformity with the ‘disciplined masculinity’ of Germany.  The atrocities committed against this population were horrific.  Is this pertinent today?  Consider Marcus Bachmann describing homosexuals as ‘barbarians’ that ‘need to be educated’ (ref) with his ‘pray away the gay’ counseling.  Both the American Psychological Association (ref) and American Psychiatric Association (ref) – amongst others – have ruled that efforts to change sexual orientation have no scientific credibility and can cause psychological harm to patients.

Discussion

Mankind has shown a remarkable propensity throughout history to attack its diversity.  Yet, where science is leading us is that we are a diverse human race and our diversity expresses itself in many ways. The Human Genome Project trumped 18th century race biology by demonstrating that there are no definable human sub-species; we are not different races of human beings, we are simply one diverse human race (ref).   Although we are a singular human race, mankind exhibits a diversity of religious belief.  Yet, regarding both race and religion mankind attacks these elements of diversity through hate crimes, extremism, discriminatory social policy, and uncountable lost lives in military conflicts.

There is little doubt that sexual preference is also a part of human diversity.  One doesn’t make a choice, a conscious decision, as to whom they are attracted.  Experts in the areas of psychology, political science, economics, socio medical sciences and history during the prop 8 trial in California exposed the objections and fears about same sex marriage as being unfounded; in fact showing that banning same sex marriage is not only discriminatory to a minority group, but damaging to that group and its children as well. Yet mankind is once again attacking an element of its diversity by issuing falsehoods, restricting rights, and fostering an environment that contributes to hate crimes and, yes, loss of life.

When the religious objections are removed, as is required in civil matters, what is left regarding the objections to same sex marriage is simply hatred born of ignorance and political manipulation.

David Niewert, in his work The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right (ref) (ref), a central source for this article and a recommended read, makes the point that the term ‘fascism’ has become nearly useless over the past 30 years.  Both liberals, in the 60′s and 70′s, and today conservatives (especially the Tea Party crowd) have so loosely used the term that its original meaning as ‘a very distinct political style, if not quite philosophy’, has become completely muddled within the broader context of totalitarianism (ref chap. 6).

The point is nicely made by examination of placards displayed at Tea Party rallies that depict president Obama as  being both a communist and a Nazi fascist complete with a Hitler-style mustache and Swastika.  The same duality has been made by conservative talk show pundits Rush Limbaugh (ref) (ref) and Glenn Beck (ref) (ref).  This indeed does give our president a broad range of political positions.  In the left-right political spectrum communism and socialism are typically placed to the left and fascism is placed on the right (ref), with scholars being in general agreement that fascism resides on the far right (ref).  The Nazi regime actually considered communism a primary enemy of Germany, that it was a Jewish strategy to subjugate Germany to the world, and leftist political dissidents were amongst the first victims targeted and liquidated by the Nazi fascists, much before racial discrimination was applied (ref).

Such reckless comparisons support the contentions of those like Frank Rich (ref), Jacob Weisberg (ref) and this writer that the red-hot anger/rage that has been expressed at Tea Party rallies, such as at the healthcare reform protests, is unfocused, unreasoned and not about specific legislation or fixing what is broken.  It is about conservative America raging against a changing America; and it is important to note how this is reflected in its language and behavior.  Tea Party proponents claim that they want to take their country back (ref), that they are ‘the true owners of the United States’ and have a ‘common belief in the values which made and keep [their] beloved nation great’ (ref).   And this rage has become ‘more free floating – more likely to claim minorities like gays Latinos and Muslims as collateral damage… [a rage that] will lash out at any convenient scapegoat’ (ref).  This rage and nationalistic language, accompanied with terror tactics including numerous death threats, acts of vandalism, displays of weaponry, assaults, and ethnic identity, all fueled by hate-mongering over the airwaves, are not new in our history nor the history of other countries in the 20th century.

In regard to the above, as well as a propensity on the Right these days to engage in revisionist history, e.g. our founding fathers ‘worked tirelessly…until slavery was extinguished’ and John Quincy Adams as a founding father (he was a generation removed, the son of John Adams) (ref), replacing slave trade with the term Atlantic Triangular Trade in history books (ref), that life during the Civil Rights era in Mississippi wasn’t ‘that bad’ (ref), etc., I thought it timely do a piece on fascism.  It might hopefully cause a bit of introspection in those who so carelessly throw the term about.  The forces (passions) that underlie the development of fascism exist today just as they have in the past, not only abroad but within our own country.

Understanding Fascism

Although there is scholarly consensus that fascism was influenced by both left and right elements of the political spectrum, it is normally described as being on the extreme right (ref).  There has been considerable debate as to its nature and whether it is even a coherent ideology (ref), some claiming that it is not a real ideology at all but rather a form of irrational and opportunistic politics committed to nihilistic violence.  Attempts to define it often leave it muddled with other forms of totalitarianism and it is often examined in its fully developed form rather than understanding the underlying forces that created the state.  Although fascism shares similarities with other forms of totalitarianism, it is a specific species of totalitarianism and it is important to understand the conditions that carried it to power.

The primary source for this section will be Chapters 1 and 6 in Niewert’s The Eliminationists and supplemented where indicated.  Niewert cites Pierre-Andre Taguieff, a French specialist on the extreme right as having said: “Neither ‘fascism’ nor ‘racism’ will do us the favour of returning in such a way that we can recognise them easily”.  For that reason, it is important to understand not what fascism’s final product looks like, but rather the traits/forces/passions that bring it to power.

Fascism is best understood as a ‘political pathology’, a constellation of traits that taken individually are innocuous enough, but taken together bring the entity into focus.  The picture most hold of Nazi fascism is that of its mature state with brown-shirted, goose-stepping goons, concentration camps and extermination of millions of human beings.  This state did not appear overnight, but rather developed over time as part of a process driven by multiple ‘passions’.  Robert Griffin (Oxford Brookes University professor of history) in his 1991 text, The Nature of Fascism, defined the core of fascism as ‘palingenetic ultranationalist populism’ – palingenetic being a mythic rebirth like the Phoenix rising from the ashes – and offered the following definition:

“Fascism: modern political ideology that seeks to regenerate the social, economic, and cultural life of a country by basing it on a heightened sense of national belonging or ethnic identity.  Fascism rejects liberal ideas such as freedom and individual rights, and often presses for the destruction of elections, legislatures, and other elements of democracy….As a result, fascism is strongly associated with right-wing fanaticism, racism, totalitarianism, and violence”.

Using this definition, an ultranationalism resides at fascism’s core, a renewal of a country’s political culture, a ‘national rebirth’ that fuses the myth of ‘traditional values’ with modern idealism.  Paxton claims that ‘fascism can appear wherever democracy is sufficiently implanted to have aroused disillusion…in order to give birth to fascism, a society must have known political liberty, for better or for worse’.  And fascism separates itself from most other kinds of politics in that is not about thought; it is unreasoned, ‘anti-intellectual’ and comes from the gut – what Mussolini’s official philosopher, Giovanni Gentile, described as “We think with our blood”.

Niewert further cites Paxton as describing nine ‘mobilizing passions’ that “form the emotional lava that set fascism’s foundation”.  Although too much to get into here (but certainly worth the read in Niewert’s work), the trajectory can be somewhat simplified.  Those that do not fit with the political and ethnic identity of the nationalistic rebirth are identified as enemies and dialog ceases.  The enemy is then scapegoated, becoming the cause of problems and a threat to the culture and state.  The ‘enemy’ is dehumanized through hate language and hate-mongering leading to ‘eliminationism’ – “a politics and a culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas in favor of the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through suppression, exile, and ejection, or extermination”.  The rhetoric typically depicts the ‘enemy’ as vermin, especially rats and cockroaches, disease-like cancers, as traitors or criminals that pose a threat to national security.  Goldhagan, in his work Hitler’s Willing Executioners describes ‘eliminationist antisemitism’ as being the driving force behind the Holocaust, “particularly…the willing participation of the ‘ordinary’ citizenry in so many murderous acts, as well as the hatemongering that precipitate those acts”.  Indeed it is the dehumanization of others through hate language and hate-mongering that is central to the ability of individuals to not only commit, but to watch and condone, the physical and emotional suffering (including death) inflicted by hate crimes against humanity.

Violence and terror tactics are accepted as being necessary to rid the country and culture of those who would destroy it.  Armed militias form as the enforcers and have a characteristic uniform; in Nazi Germany it was Brown Shirts, fascist Italy had Mussolini’s Black Shirts, and even in the US during the 1930′s there were the Silver Shirts, an American fascist organization headed by William Dudley Pelley whose ambition was to become dictator of the United States (ref).  And another, the Ku Klux Klan, that will be discussed later in this article, had its white hooded robes.

Nazi Fascism

There are two points to this section.  First, it will show that the development of the Nazi fascist state, as described in review articles, followed the process described in Niewert’s work.  Secondly, the positions and actions of Nazi Germany on issues such as homosexuality, female reproductive rights, and its approach to welfare, leaves little doubt as to why Nazi fascism tends to be placed on the far right of the political spectrum.

The Treaty of Versailles, one of the peace treaties at the end of WWI, was the source of a deep wounding of German national pride and was broadly unpopular with the German public.  It required Germany to accept sole responsibility for causing the war, to disarm, make territorial concessions, and pay heavy reparations to other countries (ref).  The ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend, widely believed in right-wing circles in Germany after 1918, held that Germany really did not lose WWI but was rather betrayed by civilians on the home front, especially politicians who overthrew the monarchy; these Government leaders were denounced as the ‘November Criminals’ (ref).  The Nazi Party, that gained in popular support when the Great Depression hit Germany, depicted the democratic Weimar coalition as a “morass of corruption, degeneracy, national humiliation, ruthless persecution of the honest national opposition”.

The Nazis promoted a socially conservative view (ref) believing that a reivindication of a glorious past was the key to a glorious future (the rebirth).  Nazi rule was characterized by a racial nationalism that was anti-Marxist, anti-semetic, and anti-democratic.  Hitler’s objective as a politician was to restore the dignity of the German nation.  As such, multiple elements of German society were targeted as not only fitting the true Aryan culture (ref), but needed to be ‘eliminated’ as part of the purification process as they were deemed a threat to the health of that culture and state.  Included in this list of the persecuted were (ref) Jews, socialists, Marxists, homosexuals, Germans with mental and physical disabilities, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gypsies, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, and (ref) feminists. Additionally, this social conservatism included persecution of so-called degenerate art, rejected youth sex, prostitution, pornography, and ‘sexual vice’, and was marked by anti-intellectualism.  Smoking, drinking and use of cosmetics were discouraged (ref).

Although many aspects of Nazi rule could be discussed, I will focus on three that are pertinent to today’s left-right politics in this country; portrayal of homosexuals, anti-feminism including dictating female reproductive rights, and the welfare state.  The agenda with these issues is hardly anything that can be ascribed to the left in today’s politics.

Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum created an exhibit on this topic (ref).  The Nazi campaign against homosexuality targeted the more than one million German men who were portrayed as carrying a “degeneracy” that threatened the “disciplined masculinity” of Germany.  Gays were denounced as “anti-social parasites” and as “enemies of the state”.  More than 100,000 gays were arrested, 50,000 of these men served prison terms as convicted homosexuals, and an unknown number were institutionalized in mental hospitals, and others – perhaps hundreds – were castrated under court order or coercion.  Thousands were imprisoned in concentration camps where many died from starvation, disease, beatings and murder.  The Nazi state, through active persecution, attempted to terrorize German homosexuals into sexual and social conformity.   Lesbians were not systematically persecuted under Nazi rule because they were valued primarily for their ability to bear children.

Anti-Feminism and Female Reproductive Rights

Hitler believed that the emancipation of women was invented by Jewish intellectuals and that for the German woman her “world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home” (ref).  Not only were women removed from professional and civil servant careers, they were believed to be unfit for jury duty because they were unable to “think logically or reason objectively, since they are ruled only by emotion”.  Noted feminists fled the country when the Nazis came to power including Helene Stocker (ref) and Clara Zetkin (ref) who was politically active and had represented her party in the Reichstag between 1920-1933.  Female reproductive rights were dictated following the maxim that “Your body does not belong to you”.  This included not only the forced sterilization program that was signed into law by Hitler himself in 1933 (ref) as part of eugenics where even teachers were ordered to identify students who might have “damaged genes” (ref), but where abortion was outlawed in ‘genetically fit’ women.  Family planning clinics were shut down, often on the grounds of alleged ties with communism.  Abortion in “suitable women” and even its facilitation were, in general, serious criminal offenses in Nazi Germany; a network of spies and secret police sought out abortionists, and prosecutions were frequent.  By 1943 the penalty for performing an abortion on a “genetically fit” woman was death’ (ref).  Women arrested for performing abortions were labelled “professional criminals” for accepting pay for an illegal activity (ref).

Nazi Social Welfare

Although fascists promoted social welfare to ameliorate economic conditions affecting their nation or race as a whole, they did not support social welfare for egalitarian reasons.  The Nazis created social welfare to deal with the large number of unemployed, but these programs were not universal in their application, ‘excluding multiple minority groups and certain other people whom they felt were incapable of helping themselves and pose a threat to the future health of the German people’ (ref).

Can Fascism Happen Here?

Primary sources for this section include Niewert’s work, The Eliminationists, (Chapter 6) and a review article of the Ku Klux Klan (ref).  These have been supplemented where indicated.

Niewert cites Paxton as making the point that the Ku Klux Klan may be the earliest phenomenon that can be ‘functionally related’ to fascism.  There were three distinct periods of the Klan.  The first flourished in the South in the immediate post-Civil War years.  The second flourished nationwide in the early and mid 1920′s, and the third emerged after WWII in opposition to the civil rights movement and progress among minorities.  The second period was impressive in its scope.  At its height in the mid-1920′s it claimed to include 15% of the nation’s eligible population, about 4-5 million men.  The Klan briefly became a national organization with chapters in all 48 states and was politically influential in several including Oregon, Indiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Maine where it supported Owen Brewster in his successful election to Governor in 1924 (ref) (for those interested, the same Senator Brewster in the film The Aviator with Leonardo DiCaprio).   In 1922 the Klan helped elect governors in Georgia, Alabama, California and Oregon and came close to ousting Jim Reed (MO) from the US Senate; additionally it was reported that perhaps as many as 75 members of the lower house had received help from Klan votes (ref).

Per Niewert, the Klan was characterized by David Chalmers as a ‘revitalization movement’.  Its goal was to enforce, through force and terror tactics, what it referred to as “traditional values” and “100 percent Americanism”.  The Klan was about an ultranationalism, a calling back to a mythic depiction of the America of the founding fathers.  An internet search has provided examples of the nationalistic imagery used to promote the organization.   The July 1924 cover of The Good Citizen (ref), a publication that was a strong supporter of the Klan, displays a hooded Klansman flying the American flag, ringing the Liberty Bell, and that included pictures of a founding father (George Washington), and the ‘Holy Bible’ – all reflective of the ‘traditional values’ and ’100 percent Americanism’ the organization claimed to represent.

Similarly, a book of Klan sheet music portrays a number of hooded Klansmen fronted by Uncle Sam with his American outfit holding the American flag, and entitled “We Are All Loyal Klansmen”.

Although the post-civil war movement focused on blacks as not being part of their ‘traditional’ American culture, Chalmers detailed the expanded scope of its enemies in the 1920′s.  Added to African Americans were Jews, Orientals, Roman Catholics, aliens/immigrants, (Gays have also made the list (ref) ) as well as drugs, bootlegging, graft, night clubs and road houses, violation of the Sabbath, unfair business dealings, sex, marital ‘goings-on’, and scandal – all became the concern of the ’100% American’.  These ‘community values’ became the justification for all kinds of violence, including lynchings, beatings, and murder, directed not only at blacks, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants, but sometimes white, Protestant females at times if it was felt that they had been engaged in immoral behavior.  The Klan supported prohibition, engaged in anti-union activities, and formed operational associations with European fascists which included a number of Nazi ‘front’ organizations.

The use of force and terror as a means to their end was also reflected in their blatant display of weaponry.  Niewert cites Chalmers as describing how Col. William Simmons, a key figure in the revival of the Klan in the early 20th century, addressed himself to a Klan gathering by placing a Colt automatic, another revolver, and a cartridge belt onto a table and then plunged a Bowie knife into the table saying “Now let the niggers, Catholics, Jews, and all the others who disdain my imperial wizardry, come on…”.  Displays of weaponry by the Klan as part of their terror tactics, including its paramilitary operations, has been detailed by Southern Poverty Law Center’s Morris Dees in his work A Lawyer’s Journey,  and a search of the internet readily reveals pictures of Klansmen bearing arms, one of whom can be seen at this attached link bearing an assault rifle (ref).  And to complete the picture, the Klan had its uniform, a hooded white robe, that was intended to induce terror into the enemies of its 100% Americanism, just as the Brown Shirts and Black Shirts terrorized the ‘enemies’ of the European fascist states in the 1930′s and 1940′s.

Discussion

Niewert cites Paxton as describing five stages in ‘fascism’s arc of flight’, the first being the creation of the movement and the second its rooting in the political system.   Fascism has typically failed in the US, France and elsewhere at the second stage for a few reasons.  First, fascism often fails to become a cohesive political entity, and once in office its proponents abandon the initial ideology that took them to office – it becomes difficult to espouse one official ideology to the exclusion of any other ‘ideas deemed alien or divisive’ in a broader body politic.  Secondly, it has met with bad timing in the US.  Niewert points out that FDR’s ascendant liberalism in the 1930′s ‘squeezed the life out of the nascent fascist elements’; FDR ‘effectively shared power with the Right which had no incentive to form a coalition with fascists’; and FDR’s New Deal program made inroads into rural areas where fascism took root in Europe.  And in the 1990′s when proto-fascism reemerged and armed anti-government militias were on the rise, e.g., The Patriots, the conservatives were in charge of both Houses and did not need to share power, and the country was enjoying a booming economy.  What pushed fascism into the second stage of power in Europe was the organized ‘thuggery’ against liberals and leftists in Germany and Italy.  German strikes were broken by vigilantes who were armed and abetted by local army authorities, and in Italy it was Mussolini’s Black Shirts that filled the void left by the liberal Italian state that could not enforce order and struck down the farm-worker unions.

In this writer’s opinion, the underlying forces at the root of fascism have been a regrettable part of the human condition over the centuries where mankind engages in eliminationism to segregate and even destroy others who do not think, believe, or look the same.  It is, at its root, unreasoned and anti-intellectual; intolerance driven by fear – and fear can be so easily manipulated for political and financial gain.  In the past it was not necessary for mainstream conservative politicians to form alliances with right-wing extremism. However, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell now find themselves in the position of having to appease an anti-government, highly socially conservative movement, that took their party back to power in the lower House and that could very well be the driver for retaking the majority in the Senate in 2012.  A movement that has been characterized by hundreds of percent increases in death threats to the president and elected officials, a rise in anti-government militias, weaponry appearing at public forums, candidates that have espoused dismantling the Department of Education and unraveling Civil Rights Law, restricting the rights of women regarding their own body, engaging in homophobic and Islamaphobic rhetoric, engaging in union-bashing/anti-labor legislation, and espousing the need to ‘take our country back’ and embrace the traditional values of our founding fathers.

It is time to take the Swastika and mustache off the president.  The ethnic and social exclusionary ideology and practices of Nazi fascism hardly fit the inclusionary practices espoused by the president and, more broadly, the left. And for those who recklessly throw the term about, perhaps some introspection would be in order.  As noted in a published review, “Niewert goes out of his way, repeatedly, to point out that America is in no way in the throes of true fascism…some of the criteria… remain clearly unmet.  But that ‘permission’ factor, the precursor that hate language brings, is most certainly present” (ref).  One of the great values of history is to learn from the past.  Thus the danger in today’s revisionist history.  And it is the intellectual laziness of those who simply listen to what reinforces their beliefs and biases that opens the door for punditry to play upon irrational fear for political and financial gain; hate-mongering that fosters a hostile environment (ref) towards both government and segments of our society.

Going back to the title of this article, perhaps it is not too much to hope for the three wishes of Dorothy’s companions: A Brain with which to reason; A Heart toward our fellow humanity; and the Courage to accept that we are but one human race with diversity (ref) having common needs.

I returned home from the grocery market this past Saturday to find my wife on the verge of tears as she relayed to me the news of the horrific shooting in Tucson, AZ that left Congresswoman Giffords in critical condition, several others dead including a federal judge, a nine year old girl, a staff member of the Congresswoman, and senior citizens, as well as several others wounded.  This is truly a sad moment, one that has occurred far too many times in our past.  This is a time when our country needs to lend its support and send our condolences to the families and loved ones of those who died, and our best wishes for full recovery to those who were wounded in this awful tragedy.

This piece is not about pre-determining the motives or stability of Mr. Loughner in this awful crime; an investigation will get to the bottom of that.  This is about the heated, provocative, and conspiratorial rhetoric that has infested our politics and our society in recent times.  Words do matter.  Words can be inspirational such as President Reagan telling Mr. Gorbachev to ‘tear down this wall’, or FDR in his first inaugural address saying to a country during troubled times that the “only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, or Dr. King’s visionary ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.  Words can also cause great damage, incite violence and contribute to hate crimes.  It was during difficult economic times in Post WWI Germany where hate language and scapegoating of Jews, socialists, and other groups took hold and fueled what was arguably the most horrific event of the 20th century – the systematic extermination of millions of human beings.  Today we have witnessed a spate of hate crimes in our gay and muslim communities, segments of our society that have been the subject of hate language (ref) (ref).

In the corporate world there is a term called ‘hostile environment’.  Should there be an act of violence or harassment committed within a corporation, it is not always a simple matter to say that some imbalanced or despicable person was at fault – a serious consideration is whether the corporation fostered or tolerated an environment that contributed to the act.  And indeed corporations can be held accountable and even sued for fostering or tolerating an environment that leaves the door open for violent or harassing behavior.  As CEO of my corporation I had written into employment agreements that we had a ‘zero tolerance policy’ regarding hostile, harassing and discriminatory behavior.  The success of such a policy is set by the tone of leadership and a firm hand at the top.

Since the election of President Obama there have been hundreds of percent increases in death threats against the president and elected lawmakers, as well as in the number of anti-government militias.  Guns have become a part of the political rhetoric with such provocative statements as reload, take aim, second amendment remedies, taking out an incumbent, if ballots don’t work bullets will, firing automatic weapons at a fundraiser, placing rifle crosshairs over Congressional districts and displaying the names of ‘targeted’ incumbents, etc.  And loaded weapons have shown up all too frequently at healthcare reform rallies, a bullet having been fired into a Congressman’s office who opposed the AZ immigration law, a holstered and concealed gun carried by a Healthcare Reform protestor dropping to the floor during a previous event by Congresswoman Giffords.  And pundits light up the airwaves with conspiracy theories that there are communists in the administration, that our African-American president is a racist and has a deep seated hatred of white people and has formed a ‘civilian national security force’ similar to Hitler’s SS.  Has an environment been created by politicians and pundits alike that fosters hostility?   I believe the answer to that is all too apparent.

Yes, words do matter.  And the power and impact of words are influenced by the times as well as the stability and ideological leanings of those who listen to them.  There is little arguing that we are in troubled times with the personal stress many have experienced during this economic downturn.  That, coupled with provocative rhetoric and conspiratorial nonsense coming over the airwaves, in this writer’s opinion, contributes to a toxic political and social environment that can push some to the point of violent behavior.

Regarding our current environment, I have compiled and referenced the following list, by no means all inclusive, for consideration.

• Within his first year in office, President Barack Obama faced up to 30 death threats a day, an increase of 400% from that reported under President G.W. Bush, that were stretching the Secret Service (ref).
• Following the election of President Obama, there was an estimated 300% increase in anti-government hate militias (ref).
• There have been instances of individuals carrying loaded weapons to Healthcare Reform town halls attended by the president: 1) about a dozen people in Phoenix, AZ (Congresswoman’s Giffords state) including one with an AR-15 assault rifle; and 2) one arrested at an Obama town hall on healthcare in New Hampshire for carrying an unregistered loaded gun as well as one carrying a loaded registered gun on his leg holding a sign quoting Jefferson – ‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants’(ref).
• Multiple instances of vandalism at Democratic lawmaker’s offices as well as threats issued to at least 10 House members following passage of the Healthcare Reform legislation (ref).  In the first 3 months of 2010 alone, officials reported 42 threats to federal lawmakers,  nearly 3 times the cases reported during the same time period a year earlier – included was Congresswoman Giffords (ref).
• Following the passage of Healthcare Reform legislation, a militia group planned a gun rally just a few miles from the Capitol and the White House.  A sponsor of the event, Oath Keepers, abruptly pulled out saying that “It had gotten to the point that it would be dangerous to attend” and cited an escalation of threatening rhetoric online from some participants (ref).
• Conservative radio host Joyce Kauffman issued the following at a Tea Party rally: “…the most important thing the founding fathers did to ensure me my First Amendment rights was they gave me a Second Amendment.  And if ballots don’t work, bullets will” (ref).  Tea Party supported Representative Allen West (R-Ft. Lauderdale) hired Kaufman as his chief of staff prior to Kaufman resigning shortly thereafter amidst  controversy (ref).
• Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minn) stated that she wanted residents of her state “armed and dangerous” over President Obama’s plan to reduce global warming (ref).
• During the 2010 midterm elections, Republican senate nominee Sharron Angle of Nevada said that “if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies”.  She immediately added “I’ll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out” (ref).
• One of the dozen or so individuals at the Phoenix, AZ  Healthcare town hall attended by the president (mentioned above), who was carrying a loaded weapon, stated on camera that he was prepared to resort to forceful resistance against the Obama administration.  The day prior to that event that same man attended a service at his church where his pastor stated in a sermon that he wanted Sasha and Malia to be fatherless and that he wanted Michelle Obama to be a widow (ref).  Again, this is Congresswoman Gifford’s state.
• Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), who opposed Arizona’s immigration law, closed his office in April, 2010 after receiving death threats, including one caller ‘who threatened to go down there and blow everyone’s brains out…” (ref).  In July of that year his office was once again closed after a shattered window and a bullet was discovered inside (ref).  Again, Congresswoman Gifford’s state.
• In August 2009, a protestor to Healthcare Reform legislation, who showed up to meet Congresswoman Giffords at one of her events in a supermarket, was removed by police when the pistol he had holstered under his armpit fell and bounced on the floor (ref).
• Sarah Palin’s Facebook page carried a map featuring 20 gun sites, one for each of the Democrats (listed by name) who were identified by her political action committee SarahPAC.  Provocative language such as ‘Reload’, ‘aim’, and ‘salvo’ were part of the dialog (ref).
• During a June 2010 fundraiser, Jesse Kelly (Congresswoman Giffords’ challenger during the recent mid-term election) asked supporters to help him ‘remove’ Giffords from her public office by shooting a loaded M-16.  The headline for the event read: “Get on target for Victory in November.  Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office.  Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly” (ref).
• Then over conservative airwaves is Rush Limbaugh telling his followers that today’s Democratic Party “advocates for the defeat of this country” and that we have a communist threat in the administration (ref); and Glenn Beck who stated that President Obama has a deep seated hatred of white people or the white culture, a term he could not define when pressed in interview by Katie Couric (ref) and, per Dana Millbrook, trafficked in 2009 such nonsense as death panels, government health insurance for dogs, FEMA concentration camps, an Obama ‘civilian national security force’ like Hitler’s SS or Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, a government official advocating forced abortions and sterilization agents in water (ref).

I have examined the claim that both parties have participated in this type of rhetoric and imagery and had examples sent to my attention; and indeed they have.  But I find the gun rhetoric and threats very heavily weighted to the right these days.   There is a map of the US issued by the DLC during the GW Bush years entitled ‘Targeting Strategy’ with archery-type targets on several states saying that those states should be ‘ripe targets for Democrats’.  There is a map of US issued by the DCCC that carries bulls eyes, with one identifying Thaddeus McCotter as a ‘Targeted Republican” for his vote against the economic recovery package.  And John McCain has defended Ms. Palin’s use of crosshairs and language as having been part of the political rhetoric for many a year.  Indeed, in the business world we would say that we targeted a competitor company if we felt we could take market share.  Where I find these examples different is that the recent imagery and language must be placed into the context of an environment that discusses second amendment remedies, bullets vs ballots, escalating death threats, etc.  I disagree with Senator McCain – he ignored the tone of environment that existed when Ms. Palin’s language and imagery was issued.  However, instances like Alan Grayson’s Taliban ad against his opponent is deplorable (ref) and then candidate Obama could have chosen a less provocative metaphor in Philadelphia than “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”(ref).  Suffice it to say that all of our leaders should choose their words carefully.

The tone is set at the leadership level, whether it be in business or politics.  Our current environment exists because it has been permitted to exist and it has been played for political and financial gain.  It is disingenuous for politicians and pundits to decry a tragic event and say that they abhor violence, when they are both contributing to, and failing to address, an environment that can push the unstable and/or ideologically-driven into taking the step of violent behavior.  Had gun play broken out in a business where such imagery and rhetoric had been repeatedly used, the corporation and its leadership would have been taken to task in a court of law.  I would agree with Speaker’s Boehner’s position that it is not his job to tell people what to think (ref) if the issue had involved something like ideology or religious belief.  However, when members of his caucus continue to pursue a position that our President is not a valid US citizen, that is precisely the time when leadership should intervene rather than let such a claim fester.

Regarding the role of pundits, as but one example, Glenn Beck’s claim that President Obama is a racist and has a deep-seated hatred of white people or white culture in July 2009 (ref) should have been denounced as irresponsible in all quarters.  Yet, a few months later, he was placed as Keynote Speaker at the 2010 CPAC, taking to the same stage as presidential hopefuls (ref).  However, when his statement is put into the context of the environment we witnessed at the Healthcare Reform protests in Washington where there were multiple instances of individuals in that crowd shouting out ‘n—-r’ to African American lawmakers (who were not central players in the debate) including one from the crowd who spat upon representative Emanuel Cleaver (ref), Beck’s statement is actually dangerous, akin to throwing gasoline on the fire of hatred and bigotry – it fosters a hostile environment.  I submit that his language should not be considered to be in the realm of entertainment.

If we are looking for common ground, it should be on this issue.  It is not acceptable to wait for a tragic event to decry violence.  Specific responsibility for a tragic event may not fall to our political leadership.  However, the tone of the environment, be it in business or politics, is the responsibility of leadership, and there is little question that we have a political environment that fosters hostility.