No. The striking thing, leaving aside the exception that Huckabee takes with potty-mouth and dis-respecter of religions, Dan Savage, for hurting religious fee-fees, is that Huckabee disapproves of the company's involvement with the It Gets Better Project, which focuses on supporting LGBT kids in the face of bullying, and was formed in reaction to a wave of LGBT kids committing suicide in despair of their situation. On some level, Mike Huckabee does not agree that LGBT kids should be supported even when they are facing the prospect of being bullied to death.
One could try to break down, specifically, what part of this mission bothers him. Is it that life is made bearable for LGBT youth, who he has a callous lack of concern for? Or is it that he simply feels that harassing a "sinner" to their breaking point is the God and Constitution-given right of any Christian child (and their parents)? Does that even matter?
For a child contemplating their sexual orientation or gender identification, this isn't a trivial matter, no matter what an ignoramus like Huckabee thinks. A young person is struggling to become an adult, and they don't just have the regard of their peers to consider--but the treatment they might face from an unenlightened school faculty, or from their own parents. Kids have been turned out of their family homes because of their identity. This isn't about some "name-calling" or fragile adolescent feelings--this is a matter of life or death for LGBT kids. This is about them being able to survive their vulnerability.
So am I saying Huckabee's signing on to this boycott is basically supporting picking on the vulnerable? You know, I think I am.
2 comments:
You're overthinking it. Let me give you an easier way to understand Huckabee, and the American Christianist Right.
ISIS.
Yep - there is precisely ZERO daylight between the Wahabist Saudi clerics and the Huckabee Christianists. They think women are property. They think gays and atheists are apostates. They think other sects are enemy combatants, and even if they don't call for their immediate death, it's clear they will get to it in due time. They are apocalyptic death cults, waiting breathlessly for the end of the world when them, and ONLY them, will be elevated to heaven. They think women are sluts, and anything they do except cover themselves from head to toe and stay at home results in their own rape, which is THEIR fault. They think science is a lie whenever it disagrees with their book, and they think that their own religious icons should represent their government. They think the political leadership should be dissolved, and governance should be rooted in the church, and clerics should have dominion over the people.
Once you realize that ALL the Abrahamic Dominionists are the same, and any outcome where they take power will look identical, and blood will always be spilled, opinions silenced and science demonized, then you'll understand that the book and the superhero and the narrative doesn't matter, because, at the end of the day, they're telling the same story when it comes to governance....
I like to use the comparison: LGBT people are born this way; being a Christian hater is a choice. What makes it clear is that people coming from the same general cultural pool of faith, like David Gushee or Tony Campolo, can come to an understanding within their faith that argues for tolerance, even acceptance of gay people. A theocrat who wraps his interest with worldly power up with his faith--never could. Putting down gays and women, dividing people into hierarchies, is a means of systemizing oppression to build power. People are mistaken when they see something like Huckabee's little boycott gesture as "quaint"--it's the tip of the iceberg of a mindset that is very dangerous to freedom. For all the yammering about their religious freedom and secular tyranny, they are the ones putting up walls between who is and isn't a person whose rights must be respected.
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