Every time I see some homophobe say bigoted things, they always justify it the same way — they cite their beloved gay friends.
Who are these people? I can’t imagine there are many lesbian and gay people who are uncloseted enough to have come out to Joe the Plumber, yet self-hating enough to say friends with someone who says this:
Queer means strange and unusual. It’s not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that. You know, God is pretty explicit in what we’re supposed to do—what man and woman are for. Now, at the same time, we’re supposed to love everybody and accept people, and preach against the sins. I’ve had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn’t have them anywhere near my children. But at the same time, they’re people, and they’re going to do their thing.
(Boy, the Republican party sure knows how to pick spokespeople, don’t it!)
My theory is that it’s just, like, three or four gay people, who spend all their time jet-setting between dinners with Joe (at a restaurant, so they don’t have to meet his kids), hanging with Rick, helicopter hunting with Sarah, stopping by BFF Donny’s house for some showtunes, and then finally taking in a science fiction con with Orson Scott. (Maybe Orson could introduce them to Maggie Gallagher, who is seemingly the nation’s only prominent anti-gay activist not claiming close gay friends.)
That’s the only rational explanation. Because I’m certain that it can’t be the case that all these nice Christian people are lying.
I like the “small cadre of gays with really questionable friends” theory, but I suspect it’s more likely that all these people *actually* mean that the bigot in question was acquaintances with someone they assumed to be straight (because of course we’re all straight until proven gay), then found out they were gay, and then dumped them.
I think friend in this case means “someone I talk to once every couple months, maybe, who I don’t dislike, and who is always nice to me.”
I don’t think Joe is an official spokesperson for the Republican party. He’s just a rank and file member with a high media profile. That being said, the party certainly doesn’t seem to be doing much to reign this kind of thing in.
Not that I would dismiss the possibility of Palin/Wurzelbacher in ’12, of course.
Hi guys…off topic…
I’m tring to alert folk to something just in the local news
“A Japanese computer game maker has dismissed a protest by United States rights campaigners against the game RapeLay, which lets players simulate sexual violence against females.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/08/2565265.htm?section=justin
You may be aware already but I haven’t time to search for it.
Please support those campaigners.
God is pretty explicit in what we’re supposed to do
Which god? Zeus is fine with homosexuality, he’s into it himself.
I am trying to think of any people I have been friends with who I wouldn’t let anywhere near my children. I can’t do it: if someone is too slimy to be near my children (not “babysit,” not “act as guardian for,” but “be anywhere near!”) then I don’t consider them a friend.
In fact, I’m trying to think if I know anyone else who has a different take on it. O can’t think of anyone; all the people I know would act as I would.
Is this a republican thing? “Be friends with everyone, even those who you consider predators?”
(Boy, the Republican party sure knows how to pick spokespeople, don’t it!)
Joe the Plumber was minding his own business when a candidate for the Presidency made an appearance in his neighborhood. He dared to speak his mind and the media seized on him. He’s a creation of the media, not the Republican party.
I am trying to think of any people I have been friends with who I wouldn’t let anywhere near my children.
I don’t have any friends that are so sleazy that I wouldn’t have trusted them to take care of my kids. I do have some friends that are not necessarily mature enough for me to have so entrusted them. But my circle of friends is mostly selected from Scouts, church and work and at least in the first two you tend not to run into sleazy people.
I have acquaintences that I’d say were too sleazy for such duty. You can’t pick who you work with. Yet you have to get along with them and be social to a certain extent.
The only way this statement makes any sense is if you define “friend” as “anybody I’ve ever known.”
And RonF … It was John McCain who thrust Joe the Plumber into the spotlight after his one-off TV appearance and John McCain who invited Joe the Plumber to stump with him. His continued prominence is largely a media creation, but prominent Republican politicians were happy to associate with him, the media that keeps giving him a platform largely is conservative media aimed at conservative audiences, and conservative groups keep inviting him to speak to them.
Very thoughtful of you. As the NOM video demonstrates, Gallagher doesn’t know any actors. Nor, apparently, has anyone had a serious discussion with her on the subject of hair product.
Now, consider that many of these nice Christian people profess deep commitment to their respective religious doctrines, but hang out with other nice religious people who profess deep commitment to conflicting religious doctrines. Today we find nothing strange about the idea that a Protestant president would ensure that Roman Catholics dominate the Supreme Court. But a few decades ago Catholics and Protestants regarded each other with deep suspicion – and in Northern Ireland, regarded each other through rifle sights.
If I recall correctly, RonF reported that Mormon and Catholic factions on the board of the Boy Scouts of America drove the decision to exclude agnostics from scouting. Thus, these factions drove the BSA to embrace a polcy that someone one who has not made up his mind about god is unworthy of membership, but a Jew that is devoutly committed to the idea that Jesus was delusional or worse is A-OK.
In this sense, the more devoutly committed any nice Christian person is to his specific denomination, the larger the percentage of people he will conclude to be damned to hell. But in our pluralistic world, that nice Christian person could scarcely avoid developing friendships with at least a few apostates and blasphemers. Why should a nice Christian person regard sodomites any differently?
Funny you would ask. Perhaps “funny” isn’t the right word.
The father of one of my daughter’s best friends confessed to inappropriate conduct with minors. My wife and I received copies of the court documents years ago from his neighbors, who have been maintaining a decade-long campaign of harassment to get him to move the hell away. We haven’t told him we know.
Nor have we told our daughter. We just give her the standard, “Keep your cellphone with you, and if you find yourself in an inappropriate situation” chat. And we’ve limited the sleep-over situations.
He’s the nicest guy in the world. It’s just a complicated world.
I think there’s a lot of conflation in Republican circles between “gay friends” and “married friends who, it later turned out, were fondling young boys.”
I think that’s what it really is. I think when the Joe the Plumbers and Sarah Palin’s bring up their gay friends, what they really mean are gay acquaintances. These “friends” are likely random people that they have briefly encountered in life, via connections to other people , and do not actually have extended, meaningful relationships with (twice-removed cousin on your spouse’s side of the family, that neighbor down the street that you sometimes nod at when you cross paths, someone your friend introduced you to at a party, etc.). In the times that they have encountered these gay people, they were probably socially polite to said gay people and in their twisted little minds, this means that they’re not homophobic and they don’t hate gay people. A friend of mine had a college dorm roommate who insisted that she wasn’t homophobic because she didn’t throw rocks at gay people. Gods, I wish I were kidding. My friend tried to introduce us once; her roommate ran away and tried to hide. She was actually in a very literal sense afraid of me. But believed that she wasn’t homophobic.
There was a guy that I knew from high school who friended me on facebook a while back. We never talked really or anything, but we had mutual friends. In the run up to Prop 8, I saw that he’d posted a comment on a mutual friend’s wall that while he totally loved gay people like me (he specifically named me) and would die for us, he just didn’t believe that same sex marriage was right. And it dawned on me then: “This dude probably thinks of me as his gay friend. He uses our minor acquaintance as facebook “friends”/high school acquaintance to justify his bigotry and props me up as a shield against criticism.” (Yup, I de-friended him)
My guess is that this is the kind of scenario that is taking place when Joe the Plumber references his mythical gay friends. That or maybe his friends are like Rudy Giuliani’s.
But my circle of friends is mostly selected from Scouts, church and work and at least in the first two you tend not to run into sleazy people.
Hmm…even accepting the basic premise, shouldn’t churches accept everyone, sleazy or not and therefore not necessarily be places where you expect to find only virtuous people? (Assuming, of course, that you weren’t praising the virtue of your workplace.)
Scott Card counts Janis Ian among his friends. She invited him to her wedding. He praises her music.
People are weird.
If I recall correctly, RonF reported that Mormon and Catholic factions on the board of the Boy Scouts of America drove the decision to exclude agnostics from scouting.
Then-Maj. Gen. Baden-Powell (Ret.) put “Duty to God” in the original version of the Scout Oath at the beginning of Scouting in England in 1908. James E. West (the BSA’s first Scout Executive) had “A Scout is Reverent” added to the Scout Law in 1911 when the British Scouts’ Law was adapted for the BSA’s beginning. It seems impossible to me to promise on your honor to uphold your duty to God if you don’t think God exists.
If the difference between an agnostic and an atheist is that the former would answer “What’s your duty to God” by saying “I’m not sure” and the latter would answer “I don’t have one, God doesn’t exist”, then agnostics are not excluded from membership in the BSA.
In any case the Mormons and the Catholics did not drive the decision to exclude atheists from Scouting; that was made in 1908, before the BSA existed. Mormons were not involved in that decision, they didn’t adopt the BSA as part of their youth program until 1916. I’ll wager that there weren’t that many Catholics involved, either. Both were very influential in making sure that decision did not change the last time it was formally reviewed, but there’s plenty of other people, including secular groups such as the VFW and American Legion (who sponsor numerous units) that want to see it continue as well.
Heck, David, I figure that Sinead O’Conner would probably try to punch me out if we hung out together but I think she’s got one of the best voices in popular music and I love listening to her.
shouldn’t churches accept everyone, sleazy or not and therefore not necessarily be places where you expect to find only virtuous people?
True – churches are full of sinners. That’s why we need churches. Let’s just say that it’s my observation that people in churches tend to try to keep a lid on sleaziness.
At least during services ….
In this sense, the more devoutly committed any nice Christian person is to his specific denomination, the larger the percentage of people he will conclude to be damned to hell. But in our pluralistic world, that nice Christian person could scarcely avoid developing friendships with at least a few apostates and blasphemers. Why should a nice Christian person regard sodomites any differently?
This is a replay of the Pharisees condemning Jesus for hanging out with tax collectors and whores instead of limiting his contacts to righteous people. Now while they probably threw much livelier parties, the actual concept is that you don’t hide yourself away, you engage with people. Set the example. Do some teaching. Answer questions. Maybe, just maybe, lead someone to the light.
I’m not sure why this is worth any attention at all. It’s good to avoid being dismissive of people, in general, but how many times does Joe need to prove to you that nothing he has to say is informed, cogent, rational, intelligent, or even demonstrative of sentience, before you ignore him? It’s not as if you need to demonstrate your intellectual superiority to him. And the game of asserting moral superiority is self-defeating. So why echo?
Sailorman,
Is this a republican thing? “Be friends with everyone, even those who you consider predators?”
While the “predators” might be a stretch, I do know a Republican who is friends with a guy who works for Greenpeace. Said Republican considers Greenpeace a law-breaking, very bad organization (in many of its goals and in almost all the ways it attempts to reach those goals), and also considers his friend to be dishonest and disingenuous in how he deals with people who disagree with him. Yet they’re old college buddies and he invited the guy to his wedding. I have conservative friends who worked in a political role for George W.’s administration (as distinct from my liberal friends who are career civil service types), but I don’t consider the work they were doing to have been in the service of evil or anything. Maybe liberals and conservatives just differ in their willingness to call their friends bad people. I like to think my friends aren’t bad people.
Doc, if my post was unnecessary, wasn’t your comment on my post telling me my post was unnecessary, doubly unnecessary?
My first thought was that all these people know the same three rich gay Republicans — either strategists who have to smile a lot, or donors who don’t care what the hired lunatic believes as long as they get tax cuts.
Amp,
Doc is engaging with you in order to bring you to the light. REPENT! of your quoting Joe the Plumber as in any way representative of non-elite conservative opinion.
More unnecessary posting:
I apologize if I mis-remembered RonF’s remarks. Perhaps I was confusing my memory of RonF’s remarks with what I’d read here:
In April of 1985, the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America ruled that a fifteen-year-old Scout, Paul Trout of Charlottesville, Virginia, “should be expelled from the Scouts because he doesn’t believe in God.” Apparently, Trout mentioned in his interview with the advancement committee for his promotion to Life that he does not believe in God (or maybe that he does not believe in God as a Supreme Being, a distinction that makes a difference). Carl Hunter, director of the Stonewall Jackson Area Council, was quoted in the press as saying, “The Scout Law requires a young man to be absolutely loyal to God and country and to be reverent toward God. You can’t do that if you don’t believe in a Supreme Being.” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took up Trout’s case, but by October the national organization reversed itself and readmitted Trout. The organization’s explanation was that Trout had said merely that he “did not believe in God as a supreme being,” and they chose to interpret his views as a disagreement over the definition of God. “So the organization’s national executive board decided to delete from its literature any definition of God . . . while reaffirming the Scout Oath’s declaration of duty to God.” I shall return to this issue of defining God, but let me move ahead to 1991.
By the summer of 1991, the BSA had two more lawsuits on its hands. The families of eight-year-old Mark Walsh of Chicago and of nine-year-old twins Michael and William Randall of Anaheim, California, had launched separate suits after their sons had been expelled from Cub Scout troops for saying they did not believe in God….
The BSA had finessed the Trout case by framing it as a mere dispute over the meaning of the word “God,” but these suits pitted avowed atheists against the BSA requirement that members believe in God….
In a decision with significant implications, Orange County Superior Court Judge Richard O. Frazee Sr. ruled in June of 1992 that the Boy Scouts could not exclude the twins “because of their beliefs, or lack of them.” More shocking still, the state supreme court refused to hear a petition from the Orange County Council of the Boy Scouts of America.
Meanwhile, the Girl Scouts of America faced a similar challenge. In November of 1992, James Randall filed a suit against the Girl Scouts on behalf of a six-year-old San Diego area girl and her father, challenging the Girl Scouts’ pledge to “serve God” as a “religious test oath” that violates the Constitution. Within a year, the Girl Scouts had changed their pledge, permitting girls to replace “God” with “words they deem more appropriate” while reciting the Girl Scout Promise. “The group’s leaders said the measure . . . acknowledges growing religious and ethnic diversity among the nation’s 2.6 million Girl Scouts,” explained a newspaper account of the national convention that voted overwhelmingly for the new policy. “In regions with large Asian and American Indian populations, the group has had trouble recruiting girls whose religious tradition does not include a Judeo-Christian concept of God. . . .”
The Girl Scouts found a comfortable solution to the dilemmas of religious diversity, choosing a route that would make the organization open to every girl….”
Similarly, the ever-authoritative Wikipedia states:
“Duty to God” is a principle of worldwide Scouting and WOSM [World Organization of the Scouting Movement] requires its member National Scout Organizations to reference “duty to God” in their Scout Promises (see WOSM Scout Promise requirements). Scouting associations apply this principle to their membership policies in different ways. The Boy Scouts of America takes a hard-line position by excluding atheists or agnostics from membership. Scouts Canada defines “duty to God” broadly in terms of “adherence to spiritual principles” and does not have any explicit policy excluding non-theists.[40] According the Equal Opportunities Policy of The Scout Association in the United Kingdom:
So I acknowledge that “Duty to God” as been in the organization from the beginning, just as I acknowledge that the rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” have been in the Declaration of Independence from the beginning. Yet there’s always the possibility that people don’t get around to implementing these words until somewhat later, and that the manner in which they choose to implement them may vary from time to time and place to place.
Back to the earlier article:
[T]he New York Times reporter … points to a basic contradiction in the BSA practices regarding religious belief. “Officials say the organization was founded for boys who believe in God and should remain true to those principles,” he writes. “But while the organization accepts Buddhists, who do not believe in a Supreme Being, and Unitarians, who seek insight from many traditions but pointedly avoid setting a creed, it does not tolerate people who are openly atheist, agnostic, or unwilling to say in that Scout oath they will serve God.”
Again:
[T]hese suits pitted avowed atheists against the BSA requirement that members believe in God. The National Council’s stance was that the BSA is a private group that can admit and exclude members by criteria particular to the organization. “Also supporting the status quo,” explained a New York Times story, “are the Church of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons, which formed the first Scouting council in America in 1913 and which remains the largest single Scout sponsor, and the Roman Catholic Church, the fourth-largest Scout sponsor. The two churches, which together support more than a quarter of all Scout troops, contend that the Boy Scouts has every right to keep certain people out, whether as Scouts, volunteers, or staff members.”
Public schools, it seems, sponsor the largest number of Scouts, which provided fuel for the plaintiffs’ view that the BSA is a public organization. But the public schools “do not speak with the unified voice of the Mormon or Catholic churches,” notes the New York Times reporter….
PG,
I’m friends with a lot of people who hold vastly different views than I do, including some who (literally) think I’m going to burn in hell, and so on.
I think that is actually fairly normal. you may be friends with people who are very different from you. In fact, since friendships tend to last over many decades, you may have some very unusual friends–I have people who i have known for over 20 years, and if I met them now I might really dislike them. but they’re old friends so we stay friends.
That said, NONE of my friends (including the very strange ones) are people who I would be nervous to have in the presence of my children. That was a very odd thing for me to read, and I’m really only talking about taht issue; the commens isn’t generalizable to “odd friends” in general.
I’m going to assume you’re intending this as a light-hearted statement, not as an indication that we atheists don’t keep a lid on our sleaziness.
I don’t know about you but, to paraphrase the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, my natural sleaziness hangs out all over the place.
nobody.really, I’d love to talk to you about it but a detailed discussion of the topic belongs in an open thread.
Definitely in a light-hearted manner, Mandolin. Atheism != sleaziness.
Sailorman,
Right, I didn’t mean friends one considers “odd” (I have lots of odd friends, and some who consider me odd, and a few whom I know would like for me to find Jesus), I mean friends one considers bad people. Also, as I tried to say to RonF but the comment got lost, I mean real friends as opposed to co-workers, the 100+ people on my Facebook friends list who might die tomorrow and I wouldn’t notice their absence from my life for a year, objects for conversion, etc. Either these aren’t real friends of JtP’s (the gay version of “my black friend”), or he’s got a strange dissonance in his willingness to befriend people whom he considers bad. (And I consider saying you don’t want someone around your children = saying that person is a bad person.)
Atheists are less likely to have specific social fora in which they feel obliged to be less sleazy than in other places, however. I still retain enough Hindu that I’d be embarrassed to wolf down a beef burger in front of a priest. There’s not really a kids-on-best-behavior, Person of Moral Authority Standing At Pulpit equivalent for atheists.
That’s because we can serve that function for ourselves. Every day, not just on Sunday or on Saturday or on Friday.
Although, I suppose, you can get that same thing w/ a judge in court or a policeman or just about anybody who can do you harm if you don’t do exactly as they say.
I don’t really see that as a benefit of believing in a god.
Just communism. ;)
(Once, when I was teaching a high school class, and we had a talk about how you shouldn’t insult other people for certain traits, I brought up religion as something you shouldn’t mock other people for (in high school, certainly). They asked me what religion I was, and I said I was an atheist, and none of the kids knew what it was. Then one of the kids exclaimed, “Oh! I know! That’s a communist, right?” That’s, like, one of my favorite moments ever. ;) )
Or just social convention or your parents or whoever might make you feel self-conscious about some behavior you otherwise consider perfectly fine.
This best behavior in church isn’t really about your internal moral compass. It’s about avoiding the judgment of the people around you. I don’t think there’s anything about being an atheist that protects you from that. You just have one less venue in which you have to perform.
Yeah, chingona, the first part of my answer was just snark.
chingona,
But surely this is different from religious self-consciousness, in which you have somewhat bought into the norms and rules of the people before whom you feel self-conscious, as opposed to what I at least feel about, say, letting my parents know I engaged in premarital sex: I don’t believe it’s wrong, but they do, and I don’t want to distress them about it (or, frankly, listen to their lectures). This is in contrast to participating voluntarily as an adult in a church where you can leave if you’re sick of their judgments (not really true about the parent-child relationship, even when the child is now an adult), and your self-consciousness is founded in a sense that the people judging you are really correct in some way, not in a sense that you don’t like to have someone you love thinking poorly of your actions.
PG,
I think that depends on how and why you’re religious. Someone might accept many key tenants of a religion and/or feel they get something important out of going to services, but just like you with your parents, not want to bring up their extramarital sex life or their love of bacon or whatever, not because they think they’ve done anything wrong but because they neither want to upset anyone nor listen to lectures. I don’t think it’s as simple for most people as just leaving if they disagree with one or two aspects of their religion. Maybe it should be, but it isn’t.
Do you eat beef normally? Is your issue that deep-down you think it’s wrong but do it anyway but feel bad in front of a priest? Or is the issue that you just don’t want to offend the priest and/or get into it? I guess I don’t know what you mean exactly by “retaining enough Hindu” that you wouldn’t eat that burger in front of a priest.
My husband retains enough Baptist in him that he won’t gamble – not even penny ante poker at a friend’s house – but he doesn’t do that to please some authority figure in a pulpit or his parents. It’s something that he’s internalized, even though he hasn’t been to church in years. Whereas other people who grew up in that church drink, and don’t think there is anything wrong with drinking, but still go to church and wouldn’t want people at church to know. They’ve read the bible and think they’re in the clear with drinking, and it’s the social disapproval they’re avoiding.
I should add that the self-consciousness that comes from thinking the people judging you are basically correct can occur in a secular context as well. I was a vegetarian for 10 years. I’m not now. Deep down, I think vegetarianism is more ethical and more environmentally responsible. So I do feel self-conscious eating meat in front of vegetarians.
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My husband retains enough Baptist in him that he won’t gamble – not even penny ante poker at a friend’s house – but he doesn’t do that to please some authority figure in a pulpit or his parents. It’s something that he’s internalized, even though he hasn’t been to church in years. Whereas other people who grew up in that church drink, and don’t think there is anything wrong with drinking, but still go to church and wouldn’t want people at church to know. They’ve read the bible and think they’re in the clear with drinking, and it’s the social disapproval they’re avoiding.
The irony of the difference between the opinion that many Baptists have of the legitimacy of the ban on drinking vs. the social disapproval that they’ll get from others if the assert that is referenced by a joke I’ve been told by Baptists among others:
Why should you always invite two Baptists to go fishing with you?
Because if you invite one he’ll drink all your beer.
RonF … It’s funny ’cause it’s true.
Understand, too, that my denomination (I’m an Episcopalian) is sometimes referred to as “Whiskeypalians”. A reputation that I do my part to uphold, God knows.
….For wherever there are four or more gathered in My name, there shall be a Fifth….