Monday, October 11, 2010

Caring Takes Effort

This lines have been made very clear in recent months. There are those who accept differences among people, and those who don't, and the two sides are digging in. As homophobia declines in the country, the rabid right keeps trying to use sexual identity as a wedge between "us" and "them," capitalizing on the misunderstanding that people have, the discomfort that citizens might have with something they don't understand.

Here's the guy running for governor in New York:
The Republican candidate for governor, Carl P. Paladino, told a gathering in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Sunday that children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking that homosexuality was acceptable, and criticized his opponent, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, for marching in a gay pride parade earlier this year.

Addressing Orthodox Jewish leaders, Mr. Paladino described his opposition to same-sex marriage.

“I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don’t want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option — it isn’t,” he said, reading from a prepared address, according to a video of the event. And then, to applause at Congregation Shaarei Chaim, he said: “I didn’t march in the gay parade this year — the gay pride parade this year. My opponent did, and that’s not the example we should be showing our children.” Paladino Attacks Gays in Brooklyn Speech

Recent polls show that most Americans support marriage equality, and the trend toward a liberal view of sexual orientation and gender identity has been relentless over the past decades. Conservatives try to convince voters that sexual orientation is a moral choice made by individuals, a moral choice that represents a mutiny against traditional values and is thus an insult to ordinary people. And this is a good, strong argument to use with ignorant people and people who are too busy to look into the matter. It is not a good argument for educated citizens and those who are paying attention.

Science does not take the conservative view, medicine does not take their view, well-considered common sense does not take the view that gay and transgender people choose to be different from the rest of the population, or that sexual orientation and gender identity are moral choices, or that LGBT people are different in any important way from everybody else. The belief that sexual orientation is a moral choice simplifies the world, making it easy to understand, but it is not an accurate view, not a view that is supported by any evidence.

To understand sexual identities that are different from your own requires cognitive effort. It's hard to understand, perhaps impossible to empathize with someone whose attention is diverted by an entirely different kind of distractor. For straight men it is hard to imagine kissing another man, and seeing men kissing typically elicits a kind of feeling that is hard to overcome, it requires effort to work through the emotional reaction and realize that those are just two people showing affection.

This creates an opening for politicians who can offer an explanation that does not require cognitive effort and does not require people to deal with their own feelings. Accept, with those such as Mr. Paladino, that gay people are morally decadent, and you don't have to go through the mental exercise of understanding why someone would want to do something you would never dream of doing. Instead of empathizing, which takes effort, you can simply reject them. The approach is appealing, not because it explains any truths about the world, but because it means that you can go on to other things, you don't have to bother thinking about it. Wrap it up and throw it away.

So how do you explain the liberal trend? While conservatives have been churning out their simple-minded explanations for sexual identity, the actual population has been moving the other way.

I think the answer is that conservatives' worst nightmare is coming true. After the Stonewall riots of 1969, the LGBT community came together in outrage. They organized, they wrote papers and books and articles, they monitored and criticized the media, they implemented a very intense and successful publicity campaign to teach straight people not to fear them, not to hate them, but to regard them as ordinary people. The conservatives call it "the gay agenda" and paint it in negative terms, as if gay people were trying to recruit children and ram their lifestyle down our throats, but all it is really is a persistent campaign by LGBT people to present themselves in a better light, and you can't blame them for that. Suddenly we saw gay people in movies and television shows, we read books by them, we realized their importance behind the scenes in many environments, we discovered many of our heroes were gay, and after several decades most straight people have come to the correct conclusion that is is just no big deal.

The conservatives can use homophobia as a wedge, maybe, through this election cycle, but it is a losing strategy in the long run.

18 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

remember, Paladino wasn't suggesting illegalizing homosexual behavior or attacking homosexuals

he was saying the government shouldn't be promoting its legitimacy

no brainwashing, no governors at gay parades, no official certification of their relationships as "marriage"

"So how do you explain the liberal trend?"

gay takeover of the entertainment industry

October 11, 2010 9:12 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, puleeze, "Anonymous"...where have you spent your life? In a cave? Or perhaps a Monastery?

"Brainwashing"? You are, of course, referring to those activities designed "to shape the minds of our youth" engaged in by just about every religious institution in the country.

"No governors at gay parades". No worry about that...you will never be elected Governor of anything.

"Gay takeover" of the entertainment industry? For that you should be thankful (if it were only true).

As Fran Liebowitz so accurately put it: ""If you removed all of the homosexuals and homosexual influence from what is generally regarded as American culture, you would pretty much be left with "Let's Make a Deal". (and to update that observation: "Housewives of New Jersey", "Sister Wives", or "Divorce Court".)

October 11, 2010 9:51 AM  
Anonymous keep on truckin' said...

"New York's candidate for governor, Carl Paladino, on Monday confirmed remarks he'd made the previous day about homosexuality, in an interview on NBC's "Today" show."

Paladino, a Tea Party favorite, on Sunday had sharply attacked homosexuality in a speech to Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn.

Speaking to an enthusiastic crowd at Congregation Shaarei Chaim in the trendy Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where hipsters live cheek by jowl with Hasidic Jews, Paladino was talking about the importance of not "pandering to the pornographers and perverts" when he continued on to the issue of gay rights.

"I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don't want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option -- it isn't," said Paladino.

Paladino also had controversial remarks in his prepared speech: "There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual" and being homosexual "is not how God created us."

In the "Today" show interview, Paladino said he is not anti-gay.

Asked about the "brainwashed" remark, he said that comment had "to do with schooling children. My feelings on homosexuality are unequivocal."

He said that "children should not be exposed to that at a young age. They don't understand this. It's a very difficult thing. And exposing them to homosexuality, especially at a Gay Pride parade, and I don't know if you've ever been to one, but they wear these little Speedos and they grind against each other. It's just a terrible thing."

When Matt Lauer noted that some of the content in Paladino's speech was written by the people he was addressing -- a group of Orthodox Jews -- Paladino said, "That section of my presentation was written, okay, and it was handed to a staffer and it was put into the text."

"That group gets to write the comments they want you to make?" Lauer asked?

"No," Paladino responded. "It was with a discussion. The part that I said was what you just quoted me" on about children being brainwashed.

In his remarks Sunday, the Republican also had harsh words for his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, for marching in this year's gay pride parade. "That's not the example we should be showing our children," he said to applause.

He added: "And don't misquote me as wanting to hurt homosexual people in any way. That would be a dastardly lie. My approach is live and let live."

In his "Today" interview, Paladino took another swing at his opponent: "I was trying to define myself very clearly, as oppposed to Mr. Cuomo. Mr. Cuomo took his daughters to a Gay Pride parade. Is that normal? Would you do it? Would you take your children to a Gay Pride parade? . . . I don't think it is proper for them to go there and watch a couple of grown men grinding against each other. I don't think that's proper. It's disgusting."

Paladino's campaign manager, Michael R. Caputo, said on Sunday that his views reflect those of the Catholic Church.

"Carl Paladino is simply expressing the views that he holds in his heart as a Catholic," Caputo told The Times. "Carl Paladino is not homophobic, and neither is the Catholic Church."

"Carl Paladino's position on this is exactly equivalent to the Catholic Church," Caputo said. "And if Andrew Cuomo has a problem with the Catholic Church's position on abortion and homosexuality, he needs to take it up with his parish priest."

Paladino's comments drew a harsh rebuke from the gay community.

But Caputo said, "The majority of New Yorkers agree with him.""

October 11, 2010 10:49 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

RCP Average: Cuomo +18.8 over Paladino

October 11, 2010 11:01 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

RCP Average: Generic Congessional Vote: GOP 5.9% over Democrats

October 11, 2010 11:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A Malaysian fundamentalist party is demanding the cancellation of a scheduled Adam Lambert concert, targeting the 'American Idol' singer's affiliation with "gay culture."

"Adam Lambert's shows ... are outrageous, with lewd dancing and a gay performance that includes kissing male dancers," Pan Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) youth leader Nasrudin Hasan told Reuters. "This is not good for people in our country." Malaysia registers homosexual sex as a criminal offense.

A party official told Reuters that PAS is threatening to drum up a bevy of its nearly 1 million members to speak to attendees of Lambert's concert, which is currently scheduled for Thursday. The group is the country's second largest political party.

The New York Times reports Lambert has already agreed to follow Malaysian performance guidelines, including keeping his clothes on. The concert is booked for Putra Indoor Stadium in Kuala Lumpur-neighboring Bukit Jalil

October 11, 2010 2:28 PM  
Anonymous Barack Milhaus said...

The White House has apparently decided to continue with its them-vs.-us polarization. I suppose finding demons revs up the base and provides fodder for local races’ mostly ad hominem ads.

Almost every ten days, a new bogeyman appears — John Boehner, Fox News, the Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh, or this week’s, the Chamber of Commerce, all as fresh relish to the main course: George Bush and Dick Cheney.

When the history of this administration is written, a key theme will be the abyss between the hope-and-change, across-the-aisle rhetoric and the almost gratuitous way Obama has caricatured his supposed opponents. The current “don’t make me look bad”/“like a dog” psychodrama follows attacks of various sorts on Arizonans, Wall Street, opponents of the Ground Zero mosque, insurers, police, doctors, and anyone above the hated $250,000 income level.

After the media’s embarrassment over the hagiographic coverage of Obama in 2007–9, they still cannot quite fathom that we have the most lashing-out and paranoid president since Richard Nixon — a nebulous and nefarious “they” always behind every administration stumble

October 11, 2010 3:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Big tough guy Paladino was walking back his hateful words about gays on GMA this morning.

"New York's Republican candidate for governor, Carl Paladino, on Monday attempted to clarify remarks he'd made the previous day about homosexuality, telling Matt Lauer on NBC's "Today" show that discrimination against gays "is horrible. It's terrible."

Paladino, a Tea Party favorite, on Sunday had sharply attacked homosexuality in a speech to Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn even as the tragedy of gay bullying has riveted the nation and a day after three gay men were tortured in the Bronx because of their sexual orientation.

Speaking to an enthusiastic crowd at Congregation Shaarei Chaim in the trendy and traditional Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where hipsters live cheek by jowl with Hasidic Jews, Paladino was talking about the importance of not "pandering to the pornographers and perverts" when he continued on to the issue of gay rights, which he opposes.

"I just think my children and your children would be much better off and much more successful getting married and raising a family, and I don't want them brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option -- it isn't," said Paladino, who has a reputation for being frank to the point of volatility.

Paladino also had controversial remarks that he did not deliver, writing at one point in his prepared speech: "There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual" and being homosexual "is not how God created us."

In the "Today" show interview, Paladino said he is not anti-gay and that he would "absolutely" recruit gays to work in his administration. "You name it. Wherever their expertise may be, we'll put them in our government."

Asked about the "brainwashed" remark, he said that comment had "to do with schooling children. My feelings on homosexuality are unequivocal. I have absolutely no problem with it whatsoever. My only reservation is marriage."

He said that "children should not be exposed to that at a young age. They don't understand this. It's a very difficult thing. And exposing them to homosexuality, especially at a Gay Pride parade, and I don't know if you've ever been to one, but they wear these little Speedos and they grind against each other. It's just a terrible thing."

When interviewer Matt Lauer noted that some of the content in Paladino's speech was written by the people he was addressing -- a group of Orthodox Jews -- Paladino said, "That section of my presentation was written, okay, and it was handed to a staffer and it was put into the [text]. I crossed it out. "

"That group gets to write the comments they want you to make?" Lauer asked?

"No," Paladino responded. "It was with a discussion, but then they went too far in the discussion and I crossed all that stuff out. The only part that I said was what you just quoted me" on about children being brainwashed.

Asked to clarify the reference to homosexuality equating with "dysfunction," he replied, "I did not say that. It's unacceptable.""

October 11, 2010 4:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

so, the liberal media reported remarks that were written by a group as a suggestion for Paladino, and which he decided not to make, as his actual remarks

media bias strikes again

October 11, 2010 5:18 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Government is broken and the economy is gasping. The reason is the same: Americans no longer feel free to roll up their sleeves and make the choices needed to fix things. Governors come to office and find that 90% of the budget is pre-committed to entitlements and mandates enacted by politicians long dead. Teachers no longer have authority to maintain order in the classroom.

Legal mandates and entitlements have accumulated, like sediment in the harbor, until it is almost impossible for Americans to get anywhere without trudging through a treacherous legal swamp. Only big businesses, not small entrepreneurs, have the size (and legal staffs) to power through the legal sludge.

America will thrive only so long as Americans wake up in the morning believing they can succeed by their own efforts. Innovation, not cheap labor, is the economic engine of America. The net increase in jobs since 1980, according to research at the Kauffman Foundation, is attributed solely to newly-started businesses.

Unleashing these powerful human forces requires, however, an open field for individual opportunity - bounded by reliable legal structures that enforce contracts and other important social norms.

Instead, the land of opportunity is more like legal quicksand. Small business owners face legal challenges at every step. Municipalities requires multiple and often nonsensical forms to do business. Labor laws expose them to legal threats by any disgruntled employee. Mandates to provide costly employment benefits impose high hurdles to hiring new employees. Well-meaning but impossibly complex laws impose requirements to prevent consumer fraud, provide disability access, prevent hiring illegal immigrants, display warnings and notices and prevent scores of other potential evils. The tax code is incomprehensible.

All of this requires legal and other overhead - costing 50% more per employee for small businesses than big businesses.

The sheer volume of law suffocates innovative instincts, while distrust of lawsuits discourages ordinary human choices. Why take a chance on the eager young person applying for a job when, if it doesn't work out, you might get sued for discrimination? Why take the risk of expanding production in another state when that requires duplicating legal risks and overhead? Why bother to start a business at all?

Over the generations, the American spirit of individual opportunity has been manifested not only in new businesses, but in the civic and public life as well - in the culture of barn-raisings and boy scouts and cake sales. These deep roots of our common culture - which Tocqueville referred to as "self-interest, rightly understood" - have also atrophied before our eyes. Hardly any social interaction is free of legal risk.

Change our destiny at the voting booth in November.

Time to reboot.

October 11, 2010 10:21 PM  
Anonymous David S. Fishback said...

We were visiting relatives in the NY area this weekend and saw this interview with Paladino on the local Fox News Outlet:

http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/local_news/brooklyn/paladino-dysfunctional-homosexuals-shouldnt-be-proud-20101010-ac

October 12, 2010 3:47 AM  
Anonymous David S. Fishback said...

The most significant point in what Paladino admits to believing is his statement about homosexuality being "an acceptable option." In other words, he appears to conclude that being gay is a choice. But it is clear that it is NOT a choice. Indeed, his statement now that he is against all discrimination against gay people except for the issue of marriage is fundamentally at odds with he view that homosexuality is "not an acceptable option."

I never heard of Paladino until he won the New York GOP gubernatorial nomination. He seems to be a bundle of resentments, coupled with blatant hypocrisies -- the most significant of which may be his declaration that his condemnation of Cuomo comes from his (Paladino's) adherence to his Catholic faith, while saying that his fathering of a child out of wedlock while a married man should not be raised because it is dredging up the past.

The good news is that even people like Paladino feel the need to say that they are against discrimination against gay people.

October 12, 2010 4:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not only homophobia, but Islamophobia is inspiring hate-crimes, which are becoming more common thanks to the radical right's non-stop fear-mongering.

"Authorities have charged four Staten Island teenagers with assault and aggravated harassment -- and are classifying both as hate crimes -- for allegedly terrorizing a Muslim classmate while he was in the eighth grade last year.

Kristian, a Muslim student who is now 16 years old and has been identified only by his first name, was the focus of a profile in the Staten Island Advance on Sunday. He told the paper the bullying started last year and at first he was called gay. Then his tormentors' focus shifted to the fact that he is Muslim (though his family is not particularly observant). The paper reports:

One day, Kristian recalled, he took a seat in the cafeteria to have lunch. A student snuck up behind him, grabbed his hair and yanked his head back, while a second one spat in his face.

"They called me a Muslim terrorist," Kristian said. "That I came to this country to blow down houses and buildings because I have long hair."

...

They began assaulting him in the hallways between classes, tripping him and then kicking and punching him -- in his knees, his groin and his back -- while he was on the floor, he said.

http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/10/young_student_endures_the_torm.html

The news of the hate crimes charges against the teenagers comes not long after Staten Island experienced its own version of the "ground zero mosque" fight.

The outcry started over the summer following the decision by a local Catholic parish to sell a piece of property to the Muslim American Society, which planned to use it for a mosque. Pamela Geller, the anti-Islam activist who helped spark the Park51 controversy in Manhattan, got involved (see, for example, her post "Selling Out Staten Island to Stealth Jihadists" http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/06/staten-island-stealth-jihad-muslim-brotherhood-aka-mas-tales-over-convent.html ). "Mosques breed terrorism, I’m sorry," said one local dissenter in June. Ultimately, the opponents of the project won: The Catholic Church backed out of the $750,000 deal to sell the property in July.
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/23/new-york-catholic-church-rejects-mosque-plan/

This is also not the first time minors on Staten Island have physically assaulted a Muslim on the basis of ethnicity. On the night of Barack Obama's election in 2008, four white teenagers beat Ali Kamara, a 17-year-old black Muslim, with a baseball bat, allegedly because of his resemblance to the newly elected president."
http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/11/staten_island_teen_gang_beat_m.html

October 12, 2010 8:02 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

when someone harasses someone first because they're gay, then because they're Muslim, it's not homophobia or islamophobia

it's looking for an excuse

if you were somehow able to wipe out both of these "phobias", these guys would have found another reason

because neither sexual perversion nor false religious beliefs had anything to do with their motives

and a gang in Staten Island beat up a guy because he looks like Obama?

gangs in NY; violent?

who would have guessed?

October 12, 2010 8:12 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In July, a heavily-armed Groveland, California, man named Byron Williams allegedly opened fire at police after they pulled over his truck in Oakland. After a dramatic shootout, two officers sustained injuries from flying shards of glass and Williams -- who had a shotgun, a handgun, a rifle, and was wearing a bulletproof vest -- was in the hospital in serious condition.

Williams' mother Janice told a local ABC affiliate her son often became angry watching TV news and "[h]e feels the people of this country are being raped by our government and politicians." She told the San Francisco Chronicle that Byron Williams was also upset at "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items." Meanwhile, the San Jose Mercury Newsquotes unnamed law enforcement sources saying that Williams, 45, "has a history showing he is anti-government, anti-corporation and against liberal causes."

Recently Williams told journalist John Hamilton that he started watching Fox because of Beck, and "the things he exposed that blew my mind. I said, well, nobody does this." In particular, Williams is a big fan of Beck's work over the summer on the Obama-Soros-Petrobras conspiracy.

This involves the claim that the Obama administration loaned a large amount of money to the Brazilian oil company Petrobras in order to help financier George Soros, who owned a stake in the firm. Then Obama ordered a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf after the BP oil spill -- which, Beck has hinted, and Williams believes, was orchestrated by Soros -- in order to further help Petrobras.

Williams is upset that Beck didn't pursue this theory to an explicit conclusion of Obama-Soros-BP collusion:

"I'm actually mad at Fox. I'm mad at them because they go on to something else. It's like they drop the issue, and it lands on a shelf somewhere to collect dust, and that's what's happening to the truth, it's going out and collecting dust. And I'm saying you're not going to let these people get away with this stuff. You can't let them get away with it. So this is my action because of Fox's neglect."

He said he heard about the Tides Foundation before it became a frequent target of Beck's -- but also that Beck was a key source of information about Tides. His statements are not always coherent; here's another taste:

"And I'd say, well, you know, that's the thing. It's that anything you do is going to be considered promoting terror attacks or promoting violence. So now they've got Beck labeled as this guy that is trying to incite violence. And what I say is that if the truth incites violence, it means that we've been living too long in the lies.

"Because it's gonna be too many -- it's gonna be more and more people that are, you know -- when you become unemployed, desperate, you can no longer pay your bills, when your society has come to a standstill, and cannot grow anymore, you're becoming socialized, everything, you know -- companies are moving overseas, what do you think is gonna happen? You know, for crying out loud. It's gonna get worse. And more and more people are gonna get desperate."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoTpLr-mBLc&feature=player_embedded

October 12, 2010 8:33 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

have you heard about William Ayers?

how about the Unabomber?

October 12, 2010 8:39 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anybody who watches Beck's show has heard of them, especially Ayers.

Beck viewers also know now is the time to buy gold! How many ingots did you buy this week?

I guess FOX News knew what it was doing when it hired itself a self-professed "rodeo clown" to do some of its "fair and balanced" news reporting.

October 12, 2010 5:38 PM  
Anonymous flying down the highway said...

"Anybody who watches Beck's show has heard of them, especially Ayers."

you know, the funny thing is, I've never seen Glenn Beck's show

I don't have anything particular against him, but, similar to Rush Limbaugh, I just don't think he's that fascinating

certainly not worth turning on the TV over

I sometimes wonder how much of his audience is liberals looking for something to whine about

October 12, 2010 9:56 PM  

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