| The latest attack on
homosexuality from Catholicism—or, more accurately,
the face of Catholicism, since especially American
Catholics are famously more and more out of step with
the hardline official hierarchy of the religion—comes
from the Pope’s latest published book, Memory
and Identity.
Frankly, if it wasn’t written by someone who
is the head of a mainstream world religion, I’d
think the excerpts available online came from a hardcore
conspiracy nut—the condemnation of homosexuals
comes not in a discussion of homosexuality or society,
but in a section discussing the role of lawmakers.
The Pope apparently believes that there are shadowy
“pressures” on the European Parliament
to legalize gay marriage, and baldly asserts that
“It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself
if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil,
perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts
to pit human rights against the family and against
man.”
Ideology of evil? Seriously? Coming from a hierarchy
that was so famously unhelpful during the Holocaust,
such overblown rhetoric seems incredibly jarring.
(The Pope also, in a near-perfect manifestation of
hypocrisy, equates abortion with the Holocaust. Note
to His Holiness: you aren’t allowed to stand
idle while Hitler murdered six million Jews and then
accuse people performing legitimate, lawful medical
procedures of being like Hitler. Sorry, you’ll
have to think of another hateful metaphor.)
I don’t believe the average Catholic feels
that homosexuality is an “ideology of evil,”
but I’m not sure that the average conservative
seems so vehemently opposed to homosexuals in America,
either. What I’m terribly afraid of is, after
such a successful election campaign based on hatred
of homosexuality, that gays are becoming the whipping
boy for everyone on the right; a poster child when
you need to rile your constituents up into an angry
mob to accomplish an unrelated policy.
Take as a domestic example the debate about Social
Security. The imminence of the potential catastrophe
is a perpetual point of disagreement between Republicans
and Democrats, and has the disadvantage (as to voter
attention and understanding) of not being a particularly
“sexy” topic. The future of Social Security
will affect all of us, especially the ones whose grandfathers
weren’t U.S. Senators and whose fathers weren’t
President of the United States, but it is notoriously
difficult to catch the interest of the public at large.
The groups that will lobby and contribute to the discussion
are those whom Social Security affects today, and
no interest group is quite so active, involved, and
formidable in this type of debate as the AARP.
The AARP, or American Association of Retired Persons,
is the single largest organization representing “midlife
and older Americans,” as they put it. The group
is nonpartisan, and has worked with the Republican
party in the past, most recently supporting the administration’s
prescription drug reform in 2003. At the moment, however,
they are opposed to the White House plan to push Social
Security headlong into the private market, and so
have gone on the blacklist of the most vicious right-wing
activists.
And what more vicious group can you think of then
the people responsible for the ridiculously-named
“Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?” Many
of the same people responsible for turning the history
of a decorated military veteran into the actions of
a war criminal (in contrast to the vaunted military
service of a man who…that’s right, went
AWOL from the National Guard assignment he used his
father’s connections to get) are now dedicated
to turning a group of retirees staying active in civic
life into the face of sexual and moral depravity.
The group leading the charge is called USA Next,
one of the largest lobbying groups in the country,
funneling millions of dollars from industries onto
the airwaves. In contrast with the AARP, which is
dependent upon individual contributions and membership
fees, USA Next is virtually a money laundering program
for corporations. A mailing or television advertisement
opposing buying prescription drugs from Canada, after
all, has less impact when it is labeled as sponsored
by a company that makes money selling prescription
drugs in the United States. USA Next steps in as the
middle man; taking millions of dollars from corporations
and spending those millions on political efforts:
about $10 million every year since 2002. In 2002,
as the New York Times points out, USA Next was the
top spender among interest groups on elections for
the House of Representative in the entire country.
That same year, the Public Citizen’s Congress
Watch condemned USA Next as led by “hired guns”
for industry and the right wing.
And now the hired guns have turned upon the AARP.
The group has hired many of the leaders of the push
behind the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,”
and Charlie Jarvis, CEO and Chairman of USA Next,
has said that it is “an honor” to be compared
to the smear campaign against John Kerry. The new
smear campaign has already begun, with plans to spend
$10 million on ads against the AARP alone, aiming
to cripple the organization and try to peel off at
least one million members from the group (into, one
presumes, the welcoming arms of USA Next or yet another
puppet organization).
To accomplish this, we return to the favorite whipping
boy of the right, homosexuality. A “trial ad”
went up on the internet last week. Making a brief
appearance on the website of “The American Spectator,”
the ad is simple: labeled “The Real AARP Agenda,”
it is a picture of an American soldier with a red
X, and two men in tuxedos kissing with a green check
mark. Who knew that the largest association of older
Americans in the country was really an anti-military,
pro-gay marriage mob? You can find a copy of the image,
among other places, here.
The combination of hatemongering and cynical deception
represented by the USA Next attack on AARP is depressing
enough, but the recent news reports describing tapes
that an old friend of George W. Bush’s made
of private conversations during their relationship
is perhaps even more demoralizing. It would be one
thing if a majority of Americans, including leadership
from the right, truly hated gay Americans and actually
thought of them as belonging in the Axis of Evil along
with North Korea. That would be a terrible situation,
but at least you could say they were being honest.
The tapes of Bush, however, make it more clear than
ever that so much hatred is consciously used as a
mere tactic. People’s lives are ruined, populations
are condemned, because Bush and Karl Rove think it
will win them elections. In a tape from September
1998, before meeting with conservative Christian leadership,
Bush says “there are code words” to signify
the right sorts of sentiments and ideas to the religious
right. Early in his political career, he says of meeting
with James Robison, a famous evangelist in Texas,
and that “he wants me to attack homosexuals.”
Later, after reading about the Christian Coalition,
Bush notes that “this crowd uses gays as the
enemy.” At the time, Bush did not see using
gays as the enemy as a good political tactic. What
a difference a few years make.
And this is perhaps the true victory of the far religious
right. Even when we’re not talking about their
cultural agenda, we end up talking about their cultural
agenda. Even a debate about Social Security turns
into another vicious pogrom in which gay marriage
is likened to the most despicable thing you can think
of two people doing. Even the Pope starts talking
about homosexuals as part of an “ideology of
evil.” The revulsion that most Americans felt
watching Pat Buchanan rail on about his far-right
views at the Republican National Convention in 1992
has become the battle cry of the right on every issue,
no matter how unrelated to their core hatreds. And
worse, a majority of American voters are persuaded
to support policies contrary to their own interests
as a result.
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