Dear Friend,
Calling all dykes, queers, perverts and other “deviants”...
If you haven’t read Chris Hedges’ new book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, we do recommend it.
Suddenly that gay rainbow flag that hangs just underneath the Episcopal flag at a nearby church takes on new meaning—about the congregation that supports it, that welcomes gays and lesbians to their services and ministry, and to the act of defiance it represents.
Not everyone in town is happy about that flag flying there; the church has been vandalized more than once.
We used to see the gay flag as a symbol of tolerance. After reading Hedges’ book we realize it is much more: a symbol of acceptance.
It is also a refusal to kowtow to Christian intolerance. It is the antithesis of Christian right-wing extremists’ views on homosexuality, which call for “cures” of “same-sex attraction.”
Tolerance, Hedges argues, must not become a tolerance of the intolerant. Is this an argument against free speech? We say no. Hate speech is not free speech.
Like Hitler in Germany, the Christian “Dominionist” movement—and we emphasize that these are not traditional Christians or even traditional evangelicals—attacks gays and lesbians, their first, easy target. The rest of us—the “unsaved”—are next.
Hedges’ ultimate argument, and we urge you to read his book for the full argument, is that the Christian Dominionist movement is determined to crush the kernel of human kindness that exists in all of us human beings.
This is from a Harper’s article Hedges wrote in May 2005. It is also included in American Fascists:
“I can't help but recall the words of my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, Dr. James Luther Adams, who told us that when we were his age, and he was then close to eighty, we would all be fighting the ‘Christian fascists.’
“He gave us that warning twenty-five years ago, when Pat Robertson and other prominent evangelists began speaking of a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all major American institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government, so as to transform the United States into a global Christian empire. At the time, it was hard to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously. But fascism, Adams warned, would not return wearing swastikas and brown shirts. Its ideological inheritors would cloak themselves in the language of the Bible; they would come carrying crosses and chanting the Pledge of Allegiance....
“Adams told us to watch closely the Christian right’s persecution of homosexuals and lesbians. Hitler, he reminded us, promised to restore moral values not long after he took power in 1933, then imposed a ban on all homosexual and lesbian organizations and publications. Then came raids on the places where homosexuals gathered, culminating on May 6, 1933, with the ransacking of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin. Twelve thousand volumes from the institute's library were tossed into a public bonfire. Homosexuals and lesbians, Adams said, would be the first ‘deviants’ singled out by the Christian right. We would be the next.”
Yours in good love and sex,
Nan & Christi
nan@fatalemedia.com
christi@fatalemedia.com
