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Why Log Cabin Republicans Are Undeniable Morons
Righteous indignation. Sorrow. Hatred. The progressive community has experienced these and more emotions over the wave of conservative hypocrisy surrounding (and leading up to) Larry Craig's arrest and resignation.
Allow me to add another emotion to the list: dumbfoundedness.
Dumbfoundedness at the faction of openly gay Republicans who actually hope that one day, given enough time and sufficient enlightenment, the GOP will come to accept them as equals.
What these men and women seem to miss is the fact that the GOP is homophobic out of political necessity. The only way that the Republican Party can win elections is by encouraging false consciousness among working and middle class Americans - by getting them to believe that social conservatism is more important to them than healthcare, sustainable jobs, or a more accessible education system.
This is the reason why the GOP bothered to cultivate a relationship with the Christian Right in the first place. The theocrats get working class Whites to willingly vote against their own interests out of social fundamentalism, and homophobia plays a key role in doing that.
The day when the Republican Party openly accepts gays and lesbians is the day when it permanently consigns itself to minority party status. As it should.
- Anders Ibsen's blog
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well put
subject line says it all
Truer words were almost never spoken.
While I don't particularly love the idea of calling anyone morons, I do think the Log Cabin Republicans are an incredibly pointless, ineffective organization.
Not that there aren't Republicans who identify as LGBT. It's just that there shouldn't be. If they've actually bothered to look at both parties, they'll see pretty clearly that the Republican party doesn't care about their issues, and Log Cabin doesn't seem to get that it's going to be a long time before the Republican Party starts caring about LGBT people. They'll give tax cuts to middle-class people before they notice LGBT people.
Not that the Democratic Party is perfect; it's not. But there are a lot more Democrats who value LGBT people and their families, and the party on the whole is getting better all the time. The Republican Party, on the other hand, is getting worse.
For more information, you should check out National Stonewall Democrats (www.stonewalldemocrats.org).
Yup
That's right, Angie.
While our party isn't exactly 100% free of homophobia, and still needs to find the collective courage to take a stand on the issue, our platform at least has the potential to embrace equality. Doing so with have no negative reprecussions on our goal.
That's the sweet irony of American conservatism. Its love affair with discrimination arises from its need for instruments of social control and misinformation.
Hmm...
Warning: I'm going to respond to a few elements of your post without addressing the central argument.
If I understand you correctly you're saying that the GOP currently wins elections because it strategically plays on homophobia, supposedly appealing to working-class whites as part of a broader conservative social agenda, and the day it stops doing that is the day Republicans will lose.
This argument could be taken to imply that Democrats would win over those voters, which you cast as a tremendously valuable voting bloc, if they would only strategically play on homophobia as well. Is that an argument you're trying to make?
Aside from my belief that the Democrats would lose a ton of votes by explicitly wooing social conservatives on socially conservative grounds, it's worth considering that "values voters" are simultaneously championed as a large voting bloc and described as having low turnout (12 percent in 2006).
Lastly, the GOP actually didn't seek out the Christian Right, though they have been aggressively seeking out other groups (by, for instance, trying to use same-sex marriage as a wedge issue in African-American communities). The Christian Right, aghast at cultural and political developments in the '60s and '70s, deliberately organized to gain influence within the Republican party. (I'm being lazy by citing Wikipedia there, but it's a starting point.)
I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
Ideology
No, never once did I say that Democrats have to use social conservatism. I'm just simply saying that Republicans are always going to need social conservatism to get working class and middle class people to vote against their economic interests. It's all a giant game of distraction.
Without bigotry and patriarchy to fuel the ideology of hyper-individualism, conservatism is exposed for the farce it is.