Despite the admission by some Republicans that the culture war has been fought and lost, others refuse to admit defeat. Rather, they want to hate gays and lesbians even more than they already do. Speaking the other day about the Supreme Court decision to stay out of the marriage equality battle, Mike Huckabee said,
I am utterly exasperated with Republicans and the so-called leadership of the Republicans who have abdicated on this issue.” For Huckabee, not digging deeper for even more hate would “guarantee they’re going to lose every election in the future.
Not only that, but the GOP will “lose guys like me and a whole bunch of still God-fearing, Bible-believing people.”
Sigh. We’ll struggle on without you somehow, Mike.
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The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) responded by proclaiming Huckabee a hero for doing “exactly right and is speaking for millions of Americans who are sick of Republican elitists remaining silent and refusing to fight for the survival of marriage, the principal building block of society and the foundation of civilization.”
And Rep. Rob DeSantis (R-FL) assured Huckabee that Republicans got a whole lotta hate left in them:
Being in Congress and seeing the left wing of the Democratic Party and the elite media in action, they are hostile to conservative cultural values across the board, they are hostile to religious liberty and a lot of our traditions and I think that the Republican Party and conservative voters are really the only force against that.
I understand where [Huckabee’s] coming from but I think there’s a whole bunch of issues in which the left is hostile to where the governor is going to be coming from and really you’ve got to have a strong opposition party to be able to stand up for those values.
But this is nothing compared to anti-gay voices in North Carolina, where, reports TPM, “A pair of North Carolina Republicans reportedly likened flying a two-story rainbow flag over city hall in Asheville, North Carolina, to flying a Nazi flag over the building.”
Boy, they sure hate rainbows in North Carolina, huh?
TPM reports,
The two Republicans, former city councilman Carl Mumpower and former Buncombe County GOP chairman Chad Nesbitt, criticized the move saying the Asheville City Council’s decision to fly the flag (the council voted unanimously to display it) violated North Carolina open meeting laws.
“I am equating their methods with the Nazi movement,” Mumpower said according to the North Carolina newspaper. “They are indifferent to the rule of law and indifferent to the vote of the people. And that’s Adolph Hitler all over again in a different disguise.”
But it’s okay for Republicans to wave the actual Nazi flag around apparently, because we’ve seen that happen without any Republican complaining, like when these yokels joined other right wing nut jobs in marching on Washington in 2009:
I don’t recall hearing any Republicans complaining about these guys, do you?
So apparently, the lesson is, you just can’t fly a flag that looks nothing like the Nazi flag, because that reminds them of the Nazi flag. But you can fly an actual Nazi flag because that’s easy to confuse with the American flag. You know, just as is this flag from another Republican rally in 2013:
Andrew Burton/Getty Images
Because nothing says you love America like the flag of a country that tried to destroy America.
It’s funny how granting more rights has become the symbol of tyranny for the party that wants to restrict rights in the name of freedom. If this makes your brain hurt, it should. That isn’t how it works.
But Mike Huckabee and NOM want more of this nonsense, and politicians like DeSantis promise it. You can be sure with demagogues like Bryan Fischer and Tony Perkins backing him up, the chorus won’t fall silent any time soon.
And they will always have David Barton, inventing history as he goes. After all, he just used Grigsby v. Reib, 105 Tex. 597, 602, 153 S.W. 1124, 1126 (1913), which, as Right Wing Watch relates, “notes that marriage is a nothing more than a civil contract that requires ‘neither license nor solemnization of religious or official ceremony’ to be legally binding,” in order to “prove” that “government is not allowed to redefine something that God himself has defined.”
If anything makes Jesus cry, this is the sh*t that makes Jesus cry. There is a commandment against lying through your teeth, and Barton’s hatred of gay people is so strong that he is willing to pimp his own immortal soul.
“I’m gone,” Huckabee warned.
Boy, I’m with you brother. Your party is full of loons. Oh wait, that’s right. You want them to be loonier.
Never mind then.
“I’ll become an independent. I’ll start finding people that have guts to stand. I’m tired of this,” Huckabee proclaimed.
Oh, like Bill O’Reilly is independent? Alright, we’ll run with that. It’s no more of a stretch than claiming membership with the human race at this point.
All I’ve got to say is that we’re tired of it too, and that it’s time for America to unfriend the Republican Party.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
