The Thought Conditioners

[Irvine511]

Does this not also strike you as a rather special situation? This wasn't a programmer or an analyst, this was a CEO -- responsible for representing the company, it's public face.

What if he had denied the Holocaust?

I'm not comparing the two, but if CEOs say and do offensive things -- certainly polite society now agrees that Prop 8 was offensive -- should they not be subject to the voices of their companies and public?

Or do we give people a special pass on this particular issue, do we cry about "being intolerant of the intolerant is intolerant" only when it seems to involve gay people? That some people really, really want to be able to bash gays and have society say to them, "yes, you can do that, it's your right to do so, after all, it's your religion and your discomfort that's what really matters here." You'd never get away with it were you to talk about Jews, blacks, women ... maybe Muslims, they sure get some hate tossed at them. ... but, goddamn it, it's my right to "object" to the fact that some people are gay.

[cobl04]

Originally Posted by Galeongirl

What exactly is a red state christian?

I believe it is a Christian from a state that leans towards the Republican Party.

[Galeongirl]

Aha, so how are they different from any other Christian in the world? What's the difference between them and Christians from other states per se?

[BVS]

Originally Posted by Galeongirl

Aha, so how are they different from any other Christian in the world? What's the difference between them and Christians from other states per se?

They're usually the ones that say "limited government" yet they want government to legislate their morality, except the parts that might effect them someday.

[KhanadaRhodes]

Originally Posted by Galeongirl

Aha, so how are they different from any other Christian in the world? What's the difference between them and Christians from other states per se?

not all of us are republicans.

[Galeongirl]

woa so you guys make a difference between both religion and political views to categorize people? You guys really love putting people in boxes, lol.

[IWasBored]

Originally Posted by KhanadaRhodes

not all of us are republicans.

True, but you're not as loud.

[the iron horse]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

Does this not also strike you as a rather special situation? This wasn't a programmer or an analyst, this was a CEO -- responsible for representing the company, it's public face.

What if he had denied the Holocaust?

I'm not comparing the two, but if CEOs say and do offensive things -- certainly polite society now agrees that Prop 8 was offensive -- should they not be subject to the voices of their companies and public?

Or do we give people a special pass on this particular issue, do we cry about "being intolerant of the intolerant is intolerant" only when it seems to involve gay people? That some people really, really want to be able to bash gays and have society say to them, "yes, you can do that, it's your right to do so, after all, it's your religion and your discomfort that's what really matters here." You'd never get away with it were you to talk about Jews, blacks, women ... maybe Muslims, they sure get some hate tossed at them. ... but, goddamn it, it's my right to "object" to the fact that some people are gay.

Prop 8 read:

Section I. Title
This measure shall be known and may be cited as the "California Marriage Protection Act."
Section 2. Article I. Section 7.5 is added to the California Constitution, to read:
Sec. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.


He gave a thousand dollars to support his view on marriage. I really don't know what you mean by a "polite society", but remember Prop 8 was voted on by the public.

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by the iron horse

Prop 8 read:



Section I. Title

This measure shall be known and may be cited as the "California Marriage Protection Act."

Section 2. Article I. Section 7.5 is added to the California Constitution, to read:

Sec. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.





He gave a thousand dollars to support his view on marriage. I really don't know what you mean by a "polite society", but remember Prop 8 was voted on by the public.

"Protection" from whom?

I've already detailed the nastiness of the Prop 8 campaign, so I won't rehash.

His view on marriage was, and is, an attack on gay people and their families. If it were voted on again today, marriage equality would be passed by the majority of Californians, as it was in several other states in 2012.

Regardless, Eich didn't vote on your marriage, why should he, and others, get to vote on mine?

We don't vote on civil rights. This dicussion of "definition" is a smokescreen, a way to dress up and justify prejudice. In the same way that people tell themselves that being gay is a choice, or that they don't "agree" with a "lifestyle" -- so too is "definition" a word used to internally justify the dehumanization of gay people.

[PhilsFan]

But, you see, it's actually a slippery slope.

[Irvine511]

one Thought Conditioner, Maggie Gallagher, admits defeat:

Cooper, Mozilla, Firefox
Posted on May 1, 2014 by Maggie Gallagher — 1 Comment ↓
A friend asked me, after reading my last interview with HuffPo, “So are you really stepping down from the marriage and religious liberty fight?”

No, I told him. Sorry if it sounded like that. What I am advocating doing is three very big, and very hard things: a) accepting where we are and b) learning from what we did not succeed in so that we can get to c) how do we build anew?

Right now most people who believe in the classic understanding of marriage are in shock, they are awed by the powers now shutting down the debate and by our ineffectualness at responding to these developments.

The temptation to shout and yell and stamp our feet in ineffectual ridiculousness is understandable, but it is to be resisted.

The version of America we were born into is no more. For the first time in American history being a faithful Christian (or Jew or Muslim) now calls into question in the public square in a new way one’s good citizenship.

Well, yes. Now what?

I headlined this essay “Cooper, Mozilla, and Arizona” because each of these recent public news events highlights one feature of the challenge before us, and what we need to build to respond.

The rapid collapse of opposition to gay marriage we are witnessing did not just happen, and it was not inevitable. But it is.

The question now on the table is: will orthodox Christianity (and other traditional faiths), be stigmatized and marginalized as the equivalent of racism in the American public square? Will Biblical morality be wiped out as an acceptable public position in America?

Or will we regroup, rebuild as a subculture, and survive to become the possibility of a new foundation in the future?

Hiding or pretending is not going to help us, now. We have to face the truth. And we have to find the Love at its heart.

And we will have to do new things, not simply do what failed, over and over again, harder.

Let me begin with Charles Cooper. Cooper gave an interview to Jo Becker, a New York Times reporter who authored a new book, Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality. The book is basically an insider account of Ted Olson’s and David Boies’s legal battle to dismantle Prop 8, and in the course of it naturally Jo Becker interviewed Chuck Cooper.

Unbeknownst to any of us, Cooper was at the time in the middle of the turmoil of the political becoming the personal. In 2013, before he attempted to argue the Prop 8 case before the Supreme Court, he learned his wife’s daughter (his stepdaughter) was gay and would be married to a woman in Massachusetts. He and his wife are co-hosting the same-sex wedding ceremony.

Cooper said two things that upset many people on our side: “My views evolve on issues of this kind the same way as other people’s do, and how I view this down the road may not be the way I view it now, or how I viewed it ten years ago,” he said to Jo Becker some months ago. And when the book became public and the news of his stepdaughter’s wedding came out he told AP: ““My daughter Ashley’s path in life has led her to happiness with a lovely young woman named Casey, and our family and Casey’s family are looking forward to celebrating their marriage in just a few weeks.”

I received many emails from people who were angry and upset by his comments, but if he were here in front of me (and I hope he reads this) this is what I would say to Charles Cooper:

“Thank you for your hard work, and your service. I had no idea you were working this hard, for so little benefit to yourself and your career, while simultaneously managing a family crisis like this. Thank you for being faithful to the end to your client and our cause. And I wish God’s blessings on you and your family.”

I would say this, even though I do not see how someone faithful to the Biblical or the natural law underlying it, can host a gay wedding. (More on this in another letter).

Nonetheless, we cannot let the “system” overwhelm the human person.

Not just Charles Cooper, we are all struggling with how to respond to the new moral order implied and reified by gay marriage.

And here is the thing I take away, and what I want you to take away, from the Charles Cooper story: Whatever we do, and whatever we say, we have to be willing to say it, as if to a beloved child of our own family, coming to us with a loving gay marriage.

There is no line we can draw that pushes gay people “outside” and leaves us free “inside” to be angry, foot-stomping, and morally “pure.”

We are all tangled up in Love with sin, our own and that of those we love.

I faced this personally, in the sense I was often asked “What if my child was gay?” I was asked it by people who believed I probably had a gay child and didn’t know it.

But I accepted that the facts are irrelevant. I could have a gay child. Anyone could have a gay child. Other people I know have gay children. Our children are beloved and yet do not necessarily put together the world the way we would have them. We have to love them anyway, across all the gaps.

A movement able to withstand what is coming will have to face the Love problem first. Anything we say, anything we believe, we are going to have to be willing to say it not only with a generic gay person in the room, but as if to a beloved gay child.

Try it before you judge Charles Cooper.

There is a lot of hard cultural, intellectual, moral, and spiritual work to be done on how to combine Love and Truth.

Let’s get to it.

Next, Brendan Eich and Mozilla. Here we face the fist within the velvet glove—one of the few public instances of what is happening all over America. People are afraid to say this: “marriage is the union of husband and wife, because kids need a mother and a father.” They are afraid and they are falling silent.

Brendan Eich is a brilliant and rich man and he will personally be okay, no matter what happens. But if he, the Mozart of Mozilla, cannot survive opposing gay marriage, who can?

A week after Brendan Eich resigned we learned from Angela McGaskill’s case, that Gaulladet University, a university for the deaf chartered by the federal government, can in fact demote her for nothing more than putting her name to a petition putting the gay marriage question before the voters of Maryland.

This is not news to me. I know many cases public and private of people facing job loss for opposing gay marriage and I know the threat of this is shutting down even more good people. This is not because they are cowards.

Think hard about these alternatives: the good that will be done by writing a letter opposing gay marriage—versus losing your family’s income. What sane person says “yes I will take that risk?”

We learn from the reaction to Brendan Eich that this kind of strong-arm public punishment makes the regnant liberal class nervous. They don’t like it. Andrew Sullivan bless him, took enormous heat for recognizing what this case means, what it stands for: punishing by the threat of unemployment, divergent views. He rebelled. Bless him.

But none of the negative objections moved Mozilla, or the power structures that be. At least not yet.

I just learned of a public statement by gay marriage advocates opposing in the name of liberal and humane values this kind of threat to people’s employment. The signatories including Jonathan Rauch, Will Saletan, David Blankenhorn and James Kirchick, all of whom emphatically support gay marriage but say: “the consequence of holding a wrong opinion should not be the loss of a job. Inflicting such consequences on others is sadly ironic in light of our movement’s hard-won victory over a social order in which LGBT people were fired, harassed, and socially marginalized for holding unorthodox opinions.”

We live in the middle of a contest. We can predict, but we do not know how it will come out.

We live in an America in which standing up for Biblical morality (or its common sense moral analog) puts your employment in jeopardy. How will we respond to the fear this inspires?

Will we recognize we are a subculture now facing a dominant culture and build subculture strategies? These include building networks to get our story out, to get the “face of the victim” in front of power? For without a community that appears to care, very few individuals will find the courage to stand.

Or will we look the other way, keep denying to ourselves what is happening right in front of our nose?

It is an open question. Fear no longer motivates, it shuts us down. We need to find new ways to come around the people under attack to build community, to give them (and us) a reason to suffer, if necessary, in the hope that someone cares.

And we need to negotiate with the new powers that be, from the position of our relative newfound weakness.

Not to surrender or beg, not to, as Ross Douthat put it, “negotiate the terms of our surrender” but to use the weapons of the weak, to force the reigning power to recognize what they are doing, the power to oppress they are marshalling against us.

Let me put it this way: the first struggle we now face is internal and spiritual: Will we accept the newly dominant culture’s view of our views—of ourselves—as hateful and bigoted and stand down?

Or will we, first of all in our heart and minds, refuse to accept this external view of ourselves. Will we stigmatize ourselves or will we force the powerful to do that to us?

It is the first question, from which a great deal else flows. If they can get us to silence ourselves, they do not have to accept moral responsibility for silencing us. The outer battle is important, but the first and most important battle is internal: Will we accept living in an America where we have to be afraid to say “marriage is the union of husband and wife because children need a mother and a father”? Or will they have to force us, through raw and ugly power, to live in that America?

That is the contest that the Mozilla episode asks of us.

To stand we are going to need new cultural resources: storytellers and social scientists. We are going to have to craft our own picture of who we are and why we stand—for the dominant culture creators’ view of who are is not pretty. That is part of the challenge Mozilla poses before us. Can we invest the resources to become culture creators and not just consumers?

Arizona.

Gov. Jan Brewer’s collapse in Arizona is very important and I don’t mean this as a criticism of her. Here is what happened. Christian conservatives tried to use their “back strategy” of quietly passing legislation through a very conservative legislature. The legislation in question was not particularly new or radical, many other states have Religious Freedom Restoration Acts with similar language.

Gay rights advocates decided to prove they could stop legislation like this deep in the heart of the reddest of all red states. And they won.

First they defined the bill as an antigay pro-discrimination measure. Then they got credible GOP leaders to validate this framing—John McCain and Mitt Romney.

They did this in a matter of hours. I doubt either McCain or Romney got a thoughtful analysis of the legislation and its meaning. They got they did not want to be “antigay” and they got props for being on the right side of history. And it was enough.

Let us not turn our eyes from what this means: by their capacity to use the mainstream media to define what an issue “means”—progressives got the conservative movement to fold with credible and major GOP figures.

They can do this.

They can do this in part because Christian conservatives have been doing politics stupidly and on the cheap.

If we keep doing politics this way we will soon not have to do politics at all.

To win a space for us at the American table, we are going to need to invest large amounts of money in new and directly political institution—organizations capable of unelecting those who would shut us out, and those capable of rewarding the courage of those who agree with us.

It cannot be all c3 messaging and pastor organizing from here on out. We get serious or we get rolled.

Which will it be?

I cannot tell you, but I can tell you this: It’s not all about numbers. It’s about intensity and intelligence.

Pew recently released a poll that could be discouraging, but I find it enormously encouraging. One of the questions they asked is about contraception. I know most Jews and Christians have no problem with contraception and I am not asking you to have a problem with it. I am asking you to appreciate a modern poll result that shows 7 percent of the American people believe contraception—while legally acceptable—is not morally acceptable.

This is the mostly Catholic base. And it represent twice the manpower of the LGBT movement. It represents 20 million people or more.

If we add to that people who believe seriously enough in Biblical morality to limit their own sexual behavior—those who think sex outside of marriage is wrong—it’s a huge base of potential support.

And we do have this: In the middle of all the decline, just 6 percent of American believe adultery is morally acceptable.

Here’s the truth: Two percent of the American population, worked a cultural revolution. Hats off to them.

We have the resources to survive, and if we survive, to eventually flourish.

Will we?

Will we face the truth, act in love, and do new things?

Let’s get over the shock and awe and get to the task God has given us: to build among the ruins of the old America, something new.

In truth, with love,



Maggie

Cooper, Mozilla, Firefox | Maggie Gallagher

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by PhilsFan

But, you see, it's actually a slippery slope.

Sterling was just stating his view that it's fine to have sex with black people, you just can't bring them to basketball games.

[the iron horse]

Something I thought I would add to the discussion.
from the book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman


Contrary to common belief, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.

As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distraction."

In 1984, Huxley added, people are controled by inflicting pain. in Brave New World, they are controled by inflicting pleasure.

In short, Orwell feared what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.



~from the book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

[Dfit00]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

Does this not also strike you as a rather special situation? This wasn't a programmer or an analyst, this was a CEO -- responsible for representing the company, it's public face.

What if he had denied the Holocaust?

I'm not comparing the two, but if CEOs say and do offensive things -- certainly polite society now agrees that Prop 8 was offensive -- should they not be subject to the voices of their companies and public?

Job titles in today's world don't mean shit.

[BVS]

Originally Posted by Dfit00

Job titles in today's world don't mean shit.

[Galeongirl]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

one Thought Conditioner, Maggie Gallagher, admits defeat:

Finally had the time to read this, and I'm glad I did.

Will we recognize we are a subculture now facing a dominant culture and build subculture strategies? These include building networks to get our story out, to get the “face of the victim” in front of power? For without a community that appears to care, very few individuals will find the courage to stand.

Or will we look the other way, keep denying to ourselves what is happening right in front of our nose?

This part strikes me the most. It's truly the core of the problem, as the Christian movement sees itself as the dominant culture, and thus they feel that they can force their views onto the rest of the country. While things are moving, and not everyone is sharing their views anymore, perhaps not even the majority (since 52% was pro gay marriage or something if I recall correctly). So that shift of power is the thing they are fighting against, not necessarily against other human beings.

[dazzledbylight]

Woah cramming ( as in the definition of "cramming" overnight for a HS or college exam the next morning like about 4 pages as fast as I could read--because posting/responding is not the last thing I want to do before sleepland.

One thought on the Liberal V? Progressive thing....


I either didn't get it at the time ( that I am about describe) OR i am right but the definaitions have way changed...

I started to become interested in local/state/national politics (NYC/NY/USA) when I was around 12 yrs...when John V Lindsey was running for Mayor....mid-late 60's.

I remember in 68 ( I was 15) going w my uncle to a either "Liberals (or Progressives) for (Hubert) Humphrey". Within that time period 68 - 70ish I understood one of the strategies in NYC Democratic Party ( I think) was that the word "Liberal" had become SO tainted with Richard Nixon winning (George Wallace being Third party candidate) that it was replaced with the word Progressive.

Now I understand there seems to be some differences.....

GG here in the USA we have Religious continiums from liberal to very conservative groups with in the Christian/Catholic/Jewish communities and at the very least in Islam from moderate to a very conservative continium.

Yes there is a shift in various demographics that is altering the formerly more prevelant White/Christian/Male "group"; i parenthesize group- because a poor white Christian male IS different from a rich white Christian male. Problems of Class in the USA have been considered less dominant than in, say, Britian for instance... but that's not completely true. Esp from Reagan onwards. Yes the losing of power is partly the trauma. Still, there is geniune hatred by some people for GLBT, People of Color, the Poor, Women (who also don't know their "place" ) and in some areas Non-Christians and Atheists.

See I've been partily avoiding deep listening of the news for several months - no NPR, No parts of Pacifica Radio, and we (in NYC) lost our last Commercial Radio station broadcasting a swarth of liberal and progessive talkers , no on-line L or P sites either (which is quite unlike my usual habits). I've got Major Art projects to struggle and focus on. I can et very upset easily at times so I'm filtering away all but the most general upsetting stuff that comes up on CBS radio or TV news.

Anyway- THAT'S why I hadn't even heard about the Mozilla CEO story until this tonight! I think cori & Irvine have very valid points about him being the face of the Company, what that represents inside and outside that coporation, and making a contribution etc.

Ha, while of course I know the phrase "yelling fire in a crowded theater" which which I just read (in Wiki - which isn't always correct, though I've read about things I know alot about and have seen good articles on those)-- said that in Holmes's orignal opinion he placed the word falsely before "yelling......" .

From a often conservative religious POV yeah, G/L/B/T is a "deviant" behavior. I remember when the DMSA removed "homosexuality" as a "Mental illness".

Funny... because something a few days ago triggered off the phrase in my head approx of what I've heard in radio discussions: "Sometimes there aren't 2 sides to every story..." . I almost was thinking of starting a thread in FYI on that.

but in the worst of circumstances calling such behavior "SINFUL" in mile-high letters can in cases lead to such abhorent acts as the murder of that poor child for "being/acting "gay" " a four yr old!!!??? (not thany any other age is any better, per se)
I also missed this story.....

If i hadn't been feeling on the relaxed, satisfied side when read this just an hour ago or so....if i'd been not feeling good i would have had the metaphorical equivilant of rolling myself up in a blanket and then crawingl under my bed and not come out for a day or something .

i will have to read AS's pieces on the CEO etc I wondered if he considers himself a Log Cabin Republican?

As for the Weekly Exaiminer next time i'm in DC whether for a march, demonstration, just for fun hanging out on The Mall & Museums or both I must run, Run, RUN - i say- to get my very own, to have and hold WE ....all my faaaaav commentators!




not!