Grand Divisions

Tennessee Equality Project seeks to advance and protect the civil rights of our State’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons and their families in each Grand Division.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Arrogance, imperialism, and totalitarianism

Descriptions of the Soviet Union during the Cold War? Yes, but that wasn't the subject of today's broadcast by Richard Land. Instead, he used those words to describe the California Supreme Court's decision to overturn the state's ban on "lesbian and homosexual" marriage.

Dr. Land wants California to tell the Court to "sit down, shut up, and butt out." And he thinks voters will do just that because he cites polls saying that they will reverse the Court. But the latest California Field Poll says the vote is close, and for the first time more Californians favor same-sex marriage than don't.

He compares the legal recognition of gay and lesbian couples to "administering poison to the wounded" for its effects on our culture.

Inflammatory language abounds in the broadcast. Most troubling, though, is that someone educated in the texts and traditions of Western thought could impute totalitarianism to a Court protecting minorities while he ignores the long chain of commentary concerned with the "tyranny of the majority." If Jesse Ventura can see that, why can't Richard Land?

"But you can't put a civil rights issue on the general ballot in a state and let people vote on it, because if you do that, in the southern states before, you can bet they would have voted to continued slavery."

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