Margaritavillain
El Coyote is about a mile from where I live. It's known for mid-range Mexican, and is always packed in the evenings. Until recently, anyway.
When 77-year-old manager Marjorie Christoffersen was outed for giving $100 dollars in support of Proposition 8, there were protests, and business has gone down 30%. She has recently resigned.
Like I always say, when it comes to blacklisting, you can't beat the Left.
(Here's a sympathetic look at the situtation from the LA Times' Steve Lopez, but even he can't help himself with this weird paragraph:
I, on the other hand, opposed Prop. 8. And as I wrote more than once, I think organized Christian religion reached new levels of hypocrisy in using the Bible to preach discrimination and promote the initiative.
You can blame the Christian religion on a lot of things, but not hypocrisy on this issue.)
posted by LAGuy @ 12:01 AM
10 Comments:
The anti-Mormon commercial was particularly egregious.
I find it fascinating that when the Left adopts the prejudices that some on the Right once held, they adopt them whole-cloth. This commercial adopts some of the anti-Mormon stereotypes that are common among various Christian groups. I similarly recall some of the liberal anti-Clarence Thomas groups depicting him using art that would be considered racist if it had come from the right.
Maybe this goes back to Voltaire, one of the fathers of the modern Left... in his religious writings, he mocked the Christian idea that God could have become a human being, and then went on to especially ridicule the idea that God would have become a Jew. And today, the anti-Israel left is repeating stereotypes that sound as if they came straight out of the Protocols.
The hypocrisy is the No on Prop 8 community persecuting people on the basis of their religious/political beliefs in the name of fighting persecution based on sexual orientation. Christian groups just did what they always do - bring any rational or intelligent discourse to a grinding halt by bringing God into the argument. And the Mormons did a phone campaign to convince people that a yes vote on Prop 8 was a vote in favor of gay marriage. I wouldn't call that hypocritical, but I would call it repugnant.
There is an argument that the Christian position of gay marriage is hypocritical when its based on selected Biblical passages while ignoring other passages in the vicinity. I.e. Prop 8ers will quote Leviticus on gay sex being an abomination but ignore the warnings on shrimp cocktail (Thank you jack Black).
I don't see how blacklisting and stereotyping can be characterized as a left/right issue- seems to be a simple fact of the human condition that we will all lie, cheat, steal, besmirch, blog whenever something affects a deeply held ideological belief. Its hard to see how the political philosophies du jour have a corner on these tactics or on virtuousness for that matter.
The selective quoting argument (which is not the one being used here--Lopez is saying that the Bible teaches people not to discriminate in general, that this should then apply to homosexuals and their right to marry, and doing otherwise is the worst hypocrisy we've ever seen from Christians) is generally a weak one. Even if Christians felt bound by the all the rules of Leviticus, it's not that hard to claim there's a hierarchy of morality, not to mention far clearer (and many more) rules about marriage and homosexuality. Otherwise, Christians--and any religious people with sacred scripture--can barely hold any moral stance that seems wrong to others. (And this is the argument many fundamentalists use--that it's all or nothing, and that "all" is a literal reading according to them, which is why they're willing to be so extreme.)
Blacklisting may not be right or left, but I'd say the left (that I see in America) is a lot better at it. Boycotts and threats of boycotts are a central part of their arsenal. If it makes you feel any better, I think conservatives are better at political correctness.
Anonymous # 1 wrote:
And the Mormons did a phone campaign to convince people that a yes vote on Prop 8 was a vote in favor of gay marriage. I wouldn't call that hypocritical, but I would call it repugnant.
Did you perhaps make a typo here? I can't figure this out.
If you simply omitted a negative (i.e., the Mormons said that a yes vote was a vote against gay marriage) it would make more sense, but I don't see why it would be shocking.
The selective quoting issue is relevant to those Christians who insist that the Bible is always clear, means exactly what it appears to say at face value, and requires no interpretation. And there are quite a few Protestants in America who claim to hold that position (although it can be logically and semantically shown that they don't really hold that position).
However, all Catholics and Orthodox Christians, and many Protestants -- and, for that matter, Mormons -- hold that Scripture is not self-interpreting. So it's not a question of "selective interpretation" -- it's just a matter of an overall hermeneutical system.
Similarly, if you watch "All in the Family," you can usually deduce that when Archie and Mike argue about politics, Norman Lear actually sides with Mike. That's not "selective interpretation". It's just correct interpretation.
Blacklisting may not be right or left, but I'd say the left (that I see in America) is a lot better at it. Boycotts and threats of boycotts are a central part of their arsenal.
I'm not certain "blacklist" and "boycott" should be used interchangeably. Boycotts are traditionally a tool of customers to pressure business owners. Whereas blacklisting, to me, historically implies business owners conspiring to deny employment to certain freelancers or job-seekers. The latter has much more of an unfair, antitrust-type feel.
I'd certainly agree that boycotts are something traditionally used more often (and better) by the left, although there are some good examples of religious conservatives succeeding in pressuring media companies through boycotts.
If a boycott is because of someone's political position, there's no moral difference with blacklisting. An employer firing an employee because he doesn't like his politics isn't and better and hardly distinguishable from an employer firing an employee because he fears customers don't like his politics. People didn't like communists during the blacklisting era--was it okay if employers fired communists because they knew the public disapproved?
Well, I wouldn't call your latter example blacklisting, actually. To me that would require collusion with other employers not to hire the poor commie. Thus, the "list" part. Though I agree that there probably is no good argument for why the two hypotheticals are morally different, the conflation still strikes me as sloppy thinking.
Dear Lawrence King,
No typo. Mormon groups called up people and asked how they were voting on Prop 8. If they said they were voting no, the Mormons tried to convince them that they did not understand the language of the proposed legislation and that voting "yes" would actually mean they were supporting gay marriage and against a gay marriage ban. I'm not sure why it is so hard to believe that the Mormons were not on the up and up and would resort to underhanded and devious tactics to push their anti-gay agenda. I never said it was shocking, but I do think lying to people who may be less intelligent and more simple than you are in order to curtail the rights of individuals based solely on their sexual orientation is repugnant.
Happy Holidays,
Anonymous #1
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