Actually, it DOES happen here, but the protestations of the Christian Taliban drown it out.
The violence that is consuming France right now is not about gay marriage, but about the Right's vengeance on a legislature that it deems "socialist" and not acting fro the "will of the people." The fact that it is an elected legislature doesn't seem to dawn on the Right, but that's another story - and a barrage of statistics on its mentality.
It was an issue that galvanized the country's faltering right, which had been decimated by infighting and their election loss to President Francois Hollande. France is the 14th country to legalize gay marriage nationwide _and the most populous.
...In recent weeks, violent attacks against gay couples have spiked and some legislators have received threats – including Claude Bartelone, the Assembly president, who got a gunpowder-filled envelope on Monday.
One of the biggest protests against same-sex marriage drew together hundreds of thousands of people bused in from the French provinces – conservative activists, schoolchildren with their parents, retirees, priests and others. That demonstration ended in blasts of tear gas, as right-wing rabble-rousers, some in masks and hoods, led the charge against police, damaging cars along the Champs-Elysees avenue and making a break for the presidential palace.
Some of the protesters even resorted to using toddlers as human shields to ward off the tear gas.
The vote for "legalizing marriage for everyone" capped months of violence against gays. And the call for gays to be killed surfaced on Twitter as a hashtag just before the vote:
Il Faut Tuer Les Homosexuels: "It Is Necessary To Kill Homosexuals"
For weeks, the Christian Taliban - represented by our own Brian Brown of National Organization for Marriage (NOM) - characterized the demonstrations as "peaceful":
In France spontaneous peaceful demonstrations by young people protesting their government's determination to ignore the voice of the people is causing headaches across the country. For the government, this is becoming a major headache. These young people are making sure government officials' support for gay marriage is not forgotten. Violence did break out but not from the pro-marriage protesters. Change is coming, something new is stirring. The truth will win out.The estimable Mr. Brown's breaking of the Seventh Commandment was not lost on a number of people, especially those who were bashed.
The Right Mix
Political analysts have weighed in on the violence, positing that conservatives would not have protested so vehemently if socialist President Francois Hollande had not gotten such abysmal approval ratings in terms of the economy. The mixture of Christian Right, disenfranchised conservatives and unemployment has been too heady for the country of 40 million, even though over 65% of the populace approve of gay marriage. It was felt that the legislation was railroaded through by an administration with too much power.
Sound familiar?
With a Christian Taliban coalescing with the NRA, rebuking Republicans who support same-sex marriage, portraying the Obama administration as a road to tyranny and Christian persecution, the recent calls for "revolution" from the Right do not seem as marginal as they once were. Of course, just as France's Right has decried the violence, our own Right has denounced violence against homosexuals - in a roundabout way: while saying that such violence is appalling, Christian Right luminaries such as Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council consistently chimes in with a strident "we aren't responsible."
Accountability
The support given to France's Right by America's own Right-wing religious may never be fully documented, (NOM gave us only a small taste) but for a group that is not ashamed to export hate, it is easy to imagine just how involved it was. In any case, accountability has never been its strong point.
And lack of accountability, as we all know, can lead to other things.
No comments:
Post a Comment