Civil Commotion

I stand before my family, friends and graduating class today, to say that I am proud to be a gay son of God.

Matt Easton

That was at the graduation ceremony at Mormon-controlled Brigham Young University. It takes guts here in the Southern Baptist south to be gay and out, and it can’t be any easier in Utah. Congratulations! to Easton for a job well done, then.

It can be difficult, nowadays, to remember that there was once a time when Republicans weren’t malicious ignoramuses.

Far-Right Smear Merchants Try to Slime
Pete Buttigieg with Bogus Sex Assault Claim

A pair of right-wing provocateurs are being accused of attempting to recruit young Republican men to level false allegations of sexual assault against Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.

The details of the operatives’ attempt emerged as one man suddenly surfaced with a vague and uncorroborated allegation that Buttigieg had assaulted him.

Donald Trump will probably tweet an allusion to this in a few days, and if he does the lie will then be eternal. Debunking will fail; “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” the gullible will tell each other.

I do not exaggerate. I have met people who still repeat the World War II-era lie that we were sucked into the war by Jewish manipulations, because Roosevelt was a corruption of Franklin Roosevelt’s true name: Rosenfeldt.

Nor is there any reasoning with the fools who fall for these lies, because the lies are merely modern myth-making and they serve the same purpose — they make the world comprehensible to idiots steeped in malice for a world they can’t belong to or, even, understand. So they create for themselves an alternate reality that demonizes others.

This is a good example of how insane the Christian understanding of the world actually is. To paraphrase: “If gaseous phantasms can’t convince us that gay marriage is allright, why, they’ll try to trick us some other way.” Because, you know, Leviticus, that text written by some Bronze Age anonymity.

This is nuts.

Franklin Graham is under fire today. He should be. His double standards have cost the church. This mistake should not define him — he has done much good and preached the Gospel faithfully for many years — but it should grieve him. Through his blatant hypocrisy, he has earned his critics’ wrath.

David French, National Review

Franklin Graham degenerated into a cartoon character years ago; criticism of him per se doesn’t especially interest me.

What makes this quote interesting is the implicit criticism of the Evangelical Right from National Review, a stalwart of conservative thought. When even they overtly express disdain for Graham et. al., you know the movement he represents is in its self-inflicted death throes.

Does Sarah Sanders even know that she has squandered her entire future by lying for Trump? That she will be a figure of ridicule for the rest of her life?