http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Jul/07072003/commenta/73077.asp
Is U.S. Congress being led by grand old gay bashers?
By Harold Meyerson
Special to The Washington Post
Scalia's justifications for discriminatory conduct sound terribly
familiar. Change "homosexual" to "Negro" and Scalia is at one with the
authors of Plessy v. Ferguson's mandate for "separate but equal" schools,
and the judges who upheld anti-miscegenation statutes.
Antonin Scalia is raging against the coming of the light.
Scalia's dissent from the epochal Supreme Court decision striking
down Texas' anti-sodomy statute confirms Ayatollah Antonin's standing as
the intellectual leader of the forces arrayed against equality and
modernity in the United States.
In establishing the deep historical roots of anti-gay sentiment in
America, for instance, Scalia took pains to note the 20 prosecutions and
four executions for consensual gay sex conducted in colonial times. He
noted, approvingly, that even today, "many Americans do not want persons
who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as
scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools
or as boarders in their home."
Actually, back in 1978, a California electorate far more conservative
than today's massively repudiated an initiative seeking to ban gays from
teaching school, but this inconvenient fact -- and other evidence of a
massive shift in public sentiment on gay rights -- doesn't have quite the
legal majesty of those four colonial executions. (Scalia is
uncharacteristically short on detail here. Were they hangings or
burnings?)
Scalia's justifications for discriminatory conduct sound terribly
familiar. Change "homosexual" to "Negro" and Scalia is at one with the
authors of Plessy v. Ferguson's mandate for "separate but equal" schools,
and the judges who upheld anti-miscegenation statutes.
Indeed, of the 13 states whose anti-sodomy statutes were struck down
in the court's decision, 10 were once slave states of the South. In what
has always been the main event in American history -- the battle to
expand the definition of "men" in Jefferson's mighty line on who's
created equal -- these are the states that have had to be dragged along
kicking and screaming.
More immediately, 12 of the 13 states with sodomy laws were states
that George W. Bush carried in the 2000 election, and the 13th -- Florida
-- was the one that Scalia and company handed to him. The culture wars
over legal equality for gays -- save on the question of gay marriage --
are pretty much settled within the Democratic Party. It's the Republicans
who are split on the question of equal rights for gays.
And in this battle, Scalia has no shortage of allies -- the recent
and current Republican congressional leadership first and foremost. From
Dick Armey, who referred to gay Democratic Rep. Barney Frank as "Barney
Fag," to Rick Santorum, who equated consensual gay sex to "man-on-dog"
fornication, to Tom DeLay, who's declared that the United States is and
ought to remain a "Christian nation," to Trent Lott, who pined for
segregation, the recent and current leaders of the Republican Party in
Congress have compiled an impressive record of industrial-strength
prejudice.
So where's the outrage? Lott, to be sure, had to step down, but for
the rest, it looks as if gay-bashing is not only accepted in the highest
Republican circles but actually a prerequisite for leadership. Just a
week ago, Bill Frist took to the airwaves to tout a constitutional
amendment banning gay marriage. Frist looked mighty uncomfortable in the
part, conveying the sense that he was speaking less from personal passion
than from partisan duty.
Of course, plenty of Republicans welcomed the Supreme Court's
decision. Plenty of Republicans are appalled when the United States votes
in international bodies with Saudi Arabia and a handful of fundamentalist
states against women's rights, reproductive freedoms and contraception
distribution programs. Plenty of Republicans sicken at the hatreds
expressed by their legislative leaders. But, plenty or not, try to find a
national Republican who speaks out for equality of sexual orientation or
condemns the expressions of bias.
It's way past time for a prominent Republican to give a Sister
Souljah speech. In a period when the United States finds itself
threatened by an international network of religious intolerants fuming at
modernity and equality, you would think some GOP notables might step up
to condemn the like-minded intolerants in their own ranks -- indeed, atop
them.
Is there no decent Republican with the guts to note that his party
could do better than be led by a rats' nest of bigots?
-----
Harold Meyerson is editor at large of the American Prospect.
----------------
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the
mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every
expanded project." - James Madison
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