Evil in Their Eyes

It looks as if, since I felt compelled to say something, I should have just gone ahead and made my point about comparisons between the Family Research Council and the Nazis. Trey, the blogger who suggested the comparison, has clarified, but without answering my unvoiced concern:

Do I believe the rhetoric of hate and demonization that the FRC uses has the possibility to increase violence and legal discrimination against my family? Yes, most defininitely. Just as I believe child pornography endangers children and extreme violence on TV numbs us to real violence (I'm sure Mr. Katz would agree.. as would the FRC, so why doesn't the FRC see what they are doing?), the speech the FRC uses against gays is a danger both now and in the future. Their rhetoric is indeed comparable to that the Nazis used against Jews.

I wonder if Trey has actually read through the disgusting Nazi propaganda from which the selective quotes of his source for the comparison were drawn. If he has, I'm at a loss to understand how he could fail to see how the equivalence abets evil through its diminishment with one hand and inflicts unjust harm with the other. Here's a taste:

When the agricultural Egyptian population prepared to defend itself against these foreign usurers and speculators, they emigrated once again, and plundered their way into the "Promised Land," where they settled and mercilessly pillaged the lawful and culturally-advanced inhabitants. ...

Here, the ultimate mixed race that is the Jews developed over the centuries from the oriental-preasiatic racial mixture, with a hint of the negroid - foreign to us Europeans, born from totally different kinds of racial elements, different from us in body and above all in soul. ...

In the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, they spread from Eastern Europe like an irresistable tide, flooding the towns and nations of Europe - in fact, the entire world. ...

Then (1918/19) the Jews seized their chance. They came to the forefront, pretending to be faithful citizens, deeply disturbed about the fate of the German people. ...

While millions of established Germans were unemployed and in misery, immigrant Jews acquired fantastic riches in a few years - not by honest work, but by usury, swindling, and fraud. ...

Supposedly their so-called religion prevents the Jews from eating meat butchered in the ordinary way. So they let the animals bleed to death. ... It would otherwise been inconceivable, considering the well-known German love of animals, that Jews until recently were able, without being punnished, to torture innocent and defenseless animals. ...

Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, Germany has raised the battle flag of war against the eternal Jew. ... "but rather the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!"

One doesn't know whether to laugh or vomit. During the part about suffering animals, the image is of laughing men. Other images are of maps plotting the Jews' infiltration of the world. According to the film, Jews are responsible for just about every crime. "The common language of international thieves comes not without reason from Hebrew and Yiddish."

The film, in short, creates an extended, mythic history of the perfidy of Jews, with sickly humorous juxtapositions of images and text, with lies stoking a paranoia such that annihilation is presented as a reasonable option. For Trey's "evidence," aligned next to the various statements and false statistics are comments from people involved with the FRC. All are out of context; many deal with demographics; many express opinions about behavior; many are indistinguishable from sources that can't be called anti-gay by any stretch. Here's another Nazi nugget:

Fifty-two out of every 100 doctors were Jews. Of every 100 merchants, 60 were Jews. The average wealth of Germans was 810 marks; the average wealth of Jews 10,000 marks.

That's aligned with Robert Knight of the FRC (from 1994):

Homosexuals are among the most economically advantaged people in our country. Research by marketing firms shows that as a group homosexuals have higher than average per-capita annual incomes ($36,800 vs. $12,287), are more likely to hold college degrees (59.6 percent vs. 18 percent), have professional or managerial positions (49 percent vs. 15.9 percent...

And here's the Providence Journal reporting on the first-ever survey — by a pro-gay group — of Rhode Island homosexuals:

81.1 percent have obtained a bachelor's degree or higher, versus 25.6 percent of all Rhode Islanders. ...

77.2 percent work full- or part-time, versus 64.7 percent of all Rhode Islanders.

The specific numbers are debatable, to be sure, but the point is that citing them in the context of testimony that a group doesn't need special protections is quite another matter from citing them to instill fear and promote annihilation. Trey's source goes on like that. To Nazi claims that Jews essentially orchestrate global crime, the source compares quotes about pedophilia and sodomy. Included is a sentence from Robert Knight, saying, "Twenty-one states have laws prohibiting sodomy," which was true at the time.

Having reaffirmed the comparison, Trey offers a hypothetical:

A national media-exposed political advocacy group which has a prominent purpose (large portion of its web site and media appearances) of opposing Christian rights to marriage, employment protection, and discrimination. To oppose these rights to Christians, this group make many claims about them. Christians have an agenda to undermine the national and social structure and destroy the nation. They must be stopped. Christians are violent and cruel people and are known to physically abuse their spouses. Christians are a a danger to children and a very large portion of them are pedophiles, abusing their own children and others' children both sexually and physically. Christians are disease-ridden and spread diseases throughout the population. Christians are increasing in number and recruiting others to their peverted lifestyle when we should be converting them away from their vile beliefs and eliminating them.

Were I in the mood to joke, I'd suggest that Christians face such a group — the ACLU. Were I feeling philosophical, I'd suggest that, even in the extremity, Trey has removed the heart of what it means to be a vibrant and variegated society by conflating the elimination of beliefs and the elimination of people.

But the truth is that I'm exhausted by the impossibility of resolving even what ought to be a simple matter of observation. I'm exhausted by the amorphous meaning attributed to "discrimination" — by the idea that it could make me a Nazi not to believe in "employment protection" for homosexuals when, in all but very narrow circumstances, I don't believe in "employment protection" for anybody.

Look, the reason I didn't go through this the other day is that I have a strong suspicion that doing so publicly will negatively affect my job search, considering my region and the sort of work I'm looking for. Owing to distortions very much like those comparing the FRC to Nazis, it's all too easy for "right-thinking" people to quickly section off those who disagree. Maybe in some nuanced way I'm not a patent bigot, the hirer might concede, but perhaps the suspicion is enough to save the hour of an interview.

So, as I sit here, before wrapping up a day spent auctioning CDs to pay bills and sending letters and email to anybody who might be able to help me find work that will, in some tangential way, further my career rather than put it on hold, wondering whether I wasn't better off without a public platform, back when I could divulge my opinions only to those whom I trusted with the information, I empathize with Trey's concerns:

... the words used by the FRC demonize me, my partner and my daughter and by doing so increases the dangers we have to face as individuals and as a family.

Until Mr. Katz and others recognize the hateful speech and rhetoric of demonization the FRC uses and calls for an end to it and acknowledges the danger it can and does pose for me and my family, then civil discourse becomes difficult if not impossible.

If they do not recognize the danger the FRC's rhetoric poses to me, then they become just another person who stands aside and says 'I didn't do it'.

I empathize more than he knows.