Friday, September 11, 2015

Linda Harvey Proposes Anti-LGBTQ "Sanctuary Cities"

Earlier this week, Mission America's Linda Harvey penned a commentary piece for World Net Daily entitled "Where Are Sanctuary Cities for Marriage?". In her column, Harvey proposes anti-LGBTQ cities for Americans who cannot bear to see advances in LGBTQ equality.

Harvey caricatures the U.S. as an anti-Christian society that is falling into lawlessness. "Christians are now going to jail if they don't support homosexuality as marriage", Harvey claims, ignoring the fact that Kim Davis was jailed for contempt of court, not her opinions. Furious at the decline of homophobia in American society, Harvey devotes much of her commentary piece to slamming LGBTQ activists ("the vicious homosexual lobby"), politicians, and "judicial bias". She complains that "tyranny and mythology are winning and American constitutional principles are the rule of law are losing", an ironic statement in light of the fact that Kim Davis defied the law.

As an alternative to living in a society in which LGBTQ people enjoy rights, Harvey suggests "sanctuary cities" for anti-LGBTQ Christians. Harvey envisions cities in which the existence of LGBTQ people is erased, business owners can discriminate with impunity, and homophobes can inflict conversion therapy on LGBTQ youth.
"So what do we do now? Here’s my suggestion. Since we are beginning to see violations of constitutional rights based on objections to homosexuality as marriage, I believe there’s a clear precedent for establishing sanctuary cities for authentic, lawful, man/woman marriage.

Think about how great life would be in those cities. After all, unlike the defiance of immigration law, these cities would be upholding the actual law under our actual Constitution, not the imaginary one in the mind of Justice Anthony Kennedy.

So, why not cities that uphold a standing, just law? Family life would be much healthier and safer in these cities. Keep out the vile “gay-pride” parades as well as harassment lawsuits against bakers and florists. And how about no pro-homosexual lessons in school, falsely implying that some people are born homosexual, or born to mutilate themselves by sex-change surgery? Also, no ban on counseling for teens who have same-sex attractions."
Harvey imagines such cities as utopian paradises for the Religious Right, in which homophobes can wallow in bigotry without repercussions.
"But imagine the freedom to live the truth. No one in such cities would be arrested or sued or fired or demoted over marriage, or have a TV show canceled, or be kicked out of grad school, or lose a consulting contract, or be mocked, or given a failing grade for supporting only man/woman marriage, or be prevented from preaching the whole Gospel."
Harvey expects LGBTQ people and their allies to respond to such cities with "screeching" and false accusations of hate crimes.
"Of course, such cities would not be without challenges. They would be targets for dirty tricks, phony “hate crimes,” special sections on “gay apartheid” by the New York Times and so on. The formulaic fables and drama, based on no facts but lots of screeching, can be composed now in advance."
Such cities would be nightmarish for LGBTQ people, their loved ones, and any remotely enlightened citizens. When I picture Harvey's "sanctuary cities", I have flashbacks of the U.S. during the segregation era, an era that America rightfully left behind. .

Religious Right figures such as Harvey think that they can drive out LGBTQ people by excluding them and denying them equal rights. They ignore the fact that LGBTQ people are not monsters over there, but their children, siblings, neighbors, and colleagues. LGBTQ people would still be born in the "sanctuary cities", and would grow up to be adults who would resent the homophobia and transphobia of  their birth cities.

I highly doubt that the Religious Right has the legal standing or critical mass to create such dystopian cities, but the thought alone is chilling. This is the world that many Religious Right figures want to create: a world of scapegoating, hatred, and tribalism.

(Hat tip to Gay Star News.)


6 comments:

  1. There is, in fact, a recent precedent -- an attempt by white supremacists to convert Leith, North Dakota into a sanctuary from black equality (and -- even better precedent -- from interracial marriage). On the other hand, it didn't work out too well.

    I agree with you that they don't have the critical mass to do this. At every stage in the gay-marriage battle the demagogues have predicted mass protests and civil disobedience. Before the Supreme Court ruling there was talk of thousands of pastors ready to go to jail -- everything up to civil war. When the ruling went against them, none of it materialized. (Kim Davis is a rather feeble effort for a civil war.) Even the 35% or so of the population that remains opposed to gay marriage mostly seems unwilling to do anything about it -- if they won't turn out for mass protests, they won't go to the even greater hassle of creating, or moving to, "sanctuary" cities. After all, deep down they know gay marriage has no effect on their lives, even if they don't like the idea.

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    1. Infidel -- Cobb and his kin sound crazy, and I'm glad the town's residents stood up to him. I expect similar attempts at creating anti-LGBTQ cities to meet with failure as well, but the sentiment behind the idea is disturbing.

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  2. Dear Twitter,

    Please don't make this woman famous. I don't know if it's accurate, but Wikipedia lists Mission: America's 2011 revenue as 23K. If she's set up for a public witch burning like Kim Davis, she'll have a bunch of conservative dollars pouring her way.

    Sigh. I grow weary of this pattern.

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    1. Michelle -- May her Christian persecution rhetoric never make her rich and famous.

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  3. I'm not going to lie. Part of me likes the idea of all the bigoted fundies living together in one isolated location. I hear Warren Jeffs has a development for sale in a god-forsaken location in Texas. That should do nicely.

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    1. Agi Tater -- As much as I'd love it if the Religious Right isolated itself somewhere, the LGBTQ people living among them would suffer.

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