I'm going to try and keep this simple so Pat Buchanan won't be too confused. His column for WorldNutDaily just cannot pass without someone telling him he's full of it.
There is a material difference between Rosa Parks, who was told she could not sit at the front of the bus with white people and religious zealots who want to tell gay people to f*ck off and die.
Spinning history in reverse does not make his case.
Only this time, the rebellion is likely to arise from the right.
Certainly, Americans are no strangers to lawbreaking. What else was our revolution but a rebellion to overthrow the centuries-old rule and law of king and parliament, and establish our own?
...
Rosa Parks is celebrated. But the pizza lady who said her Christian beliefs would not permit her to cater a same-sex wedding was declared a bigot. And the LGBT crowd, crowing over its Supreme Court triumph, is writing legislation to make it a violation of federal civil rights law for that lady to refuse to cater that wedding.
But are people who celebrate the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village as the Mount Sinai moment of their movement really standing on solid ground to demand that we all respect the Obergefell decision as holy writ?
And if cities, states or Congress enact laws that make it a crime not to rent to homosexuals, or to refuse services at celebrations of their unions, would not dissenting Christians stand on the same moral ground as Dr. King if they disobeyed those laws?
No. They would not stand on the same moral ground because when they choose to open an business and make a profit on that business in this country, they do so with the understanding that they must abide by the laws of the land. That means zoning laws, tax laws, health and safety laws, and yes, nondiscrimination laws.
Please do take note of the word "nondiscrimination." When Rosa Parks was sent to the back of the bus, that was permitted discrimination at the time, which she stood against. There. is. no. equivalence. It is damn evil to suggest there is.
Already, some businesses have refused to comply with the Obamacare mandate to provide contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs to their employees. Priests and pastors are going to refuse to perform same-sex marriages. Churches and chapels will refuse to host them. Christian colleges and universities will deny married-couple facilities to homosexuals.
And that is religious organizations' right under the First Amendment, which Buchanan seems to forget about. Churches are not for-profit businesses. See the difference, Pat?
Laws will be passed to outlaw such practices as discrimination, and those laws, which the Christians believe violate eternal law and natural law, will, as Dr. King instructed, be disobeyed.
And the removal of tax exemptions will then be on the table.
If a family disagreed as broadly as we Americans do on issues so fundamental as right and wrong, good and evil, the family would fall apart, the couple would divorce, and the children would go their separate ways.
Something like that is happening in the country.
A secession of the heart has already taken place in America, and a secession, not of states, but of people from one another, caused by divisions on social, moral, cultural and political views and values, is taking place.
America is disuniting, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote 25 years ago.
And for those who, when young, rejected the views, values and laws of Eisenhower’s America, what makes them think that dissenting Americans in this post-Christian and anti-Christian era will accept their laws, beliefs, values?
Why should they?
Because they are Americans. And even Jesus said, "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's." That's why.
I have had just about enough of the fearmongering and hysteria over same-sex marriage. So here are some basic things that these wingnuts need to understand.
- Churches and ministers and priests enjoy First Amendment protections, and will not be forced to perform same-sex marriages.
- Judges are government employees and are required to perform their duties in accordance with government rules, policies and regulations. The government is not allowed to discriminate. If judges and county clerks don't want to do their jobs, they should resign and let someone take over who will. They do not get the benefit of deciding who they will or will not serve.
- For-profit concerns, as I mentioned above, are required to operate under the laws of the land.
Imagine if the left had reacted this insanely when Dubya was elected by the United States Supreme Court. Imagine that they had decided that Bush wasn't really the President and chosen not to pay their higher taxes, or go off to war, or acknowledge him at all?
Can you imagine the right wing wailing and gnashing of teeth? You'd hear it on Mars.
But here's this ancient relic of a wingnut calling for nullification of a Supreme Court decision because he just cannot abide the idea of gay people having a happy life.
Worse yet, WorldNutDaily exists to reinforce this crap.
Pat Buchanan longs for America to be a theocracy, something it is not now, nor has it ever been. Wishing will not make it so, and if these people cannot get their heads around two people of the same gender making a lifelong commitment to one another, they should absolutely disobey.
From Iraq, or Afghanistan, or whichever theocracy they'd care to inhabit.
