by Damozel | Newt Gingrich's sister, LGBT activist Candace, has published an awesome open letter to her brother at HuffPost. In pertinent part, it reads:
I recently had the displeasure of watching you bash the protestors of the Prop 8 marriage ban to Bill O'Reilly on FOX News. I must say, after years of watching you build your career by stirring up the fears and prejudices of the far right, I feel compelled to use the words of your idol, Ronald Reagan, "There you go, again."
Then again, we've seen these tactics before. We know how much the right likes to play political and cultural hardball, and then turn around and accuse us of lashing out first. You give a pass to a religious group -- one that looks down upon minorities and women -- when they use their money and membership roles to roll back the rights of others, and then you label us "fascists" when we fight back. You belittle the relationships of gay and lesbian couples, and yet somehow neglect to explain who anointed you the protector of "traditional" marriage. And, of course, you've also mastered taking the foolish actions of a few people and then indicting an entire population based on those mistakes. I fail to see how any of these patterns coincide with the values of "historic Christianity" you claim to champion.
....This is just more of the blatant hypocrisy we're used to hearing..(HuffPost)
I fail to see it too. I've read the Gospels thoroughly and repeatedly, and if there is one thing that's clear about Jesus, it is that he hated self-righteousness, sanctimony, and hypocrisy more than almost anything else. He repeatedly lashed out at his generation's symbols of public righteousness, comparing them to sepulchers that looked nice from the outside but that were filled inside with corrupt flesh. He became particularly irate when considering their attempts to decide who was, and was not, worthy to enter the kingdom or to decide which sins got you pushed outside the fold.
Those people didn't get it then and the Christian right still don't. I wonder what he would think about the way in which his religion of inclusion and fellowship---which took for granted that we were all sinners together---has been used over the centuries as an instrument for persecution and exclusion. You know what? I do not think he'd like it at all.
I enjoy very much imagining how he'd respond if confronted with Newt Gingrich as the Defender of Marriage. He was quite clear on the subject of divorce and adultery, whatever he might have believed about other forms of sexual sin.
If there was anything he tried to get across, it was that the kingdom is open to all and that in his kingdom, there would be no giving and taking in marriage anyway. Whatever his point of view on marriage or homosexuality, I imagine he'd be way more troubled by the ugly emotions that lie behind the wish to exclude gays than he would be by the "sanctity" of marriage.
He seemed quite prepared to dispense with sanctity any time it got in the way of reaching out to other humans: I am thinking of the Samaritan woman at the well (who he knew was living with a man who was not her husband), the parable of the good Samaritan, his friendships with publicans and beggars and lepers, and a host of other examples. (The people he did seem to think might have a bit of difficulty entering the kingdom were the religious officials and officiants and the wealthy---I presume because they wouldn't want to have to rub elbows with all those people they found offensive.)
Possibly I am mistaken, though. Stephen Colbert recently mused, "If there's one thing Jesus cared about, it's semantics."
More from Damozel on this topic: First, Take that Plank Out of Your Own Eye
Memeorandum has other blog reactions. See Pam Spaulding's piece at Pam's House Blend.
RECENT BUCK NAKED POLITICS POSTINGS
Comments