"Special Rights" argument comes from the Religious Right's attempts to divide minorities on ballot measures

Maybe everyone else knew this, but I didn't until I started reading Gay Rights at the Ballot Box by Amy L. Stone, an assistant professor of sociology at Trinity University.  Basically the argument we so

frequently hear about equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people being "special rights" came from the Religious Right's efforts to divide minority communities during the Right's earlier wave of anti-equality ballot measures.

Here's what Stone says:

Part of this secular argument about 'special rights' was a new image of the Religious Right as supportive of civil rights for 'deserving' minorities such as African Americans but opposed to 'undeserving' minorities such as LGBT activists. The anti-gay Right used special rights political messaging to divide potential allies by exacerbating existing tensions about race and class in LGBT politics. Through this messaging, the Right reaffirms gayness as whiteness, creating divisions between a presumed white LGBT movement and the presumed heterosexual African American community.

It does seem pretty consistent with the playbook, though the language of special rights is now also used to justify majority rejection of equality legislation.  Both the special rights language and the tactic of dividing minorities are items to watch as the ballot measure campaign to overturn the partner benefits and non-discrimination ordinance in Chattanooga gets underway.   

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."