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| Sen Josh Hawley - point man for religious right tantrum. |
U.S. Senator Josh Hawley - an ally of the anti-LGBTQ industry who we should keep a wary eye for future reference - made a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday. His speech was a rehash of the same nonsense we've come to hear whenever SCOTUS makes a pro-LGBTQ ruling:
" blah blah blah, "unelected judges" , blah, blah, blah, "legislating from the bench," blah, blah, blah, "judges are not supposed to make laws. That's the job of Congress."
Then Hawley said this, which really got a chuckle out of me:
. . . I would just say it's not time for religious conservatives to shut up. We've done that for too long. No, it's time for religious conservatives to stand up and to speak out,” the senator said.
"It's time for religious conservatives to bring forward the best of our ideas on every policy affecting this nation. We should be out in the forefront leading on economics, on trade, on race, on class, on every subject that matters for what our Founders called the general welfare, because we have a lot to offer,” he said.
“It’s time for religious conservatives to take the lead rather than being pushed to the back. It’s time for religious conservatives to stand up and speak out rather than being told to sit down and shut up,” Hawley said.
Are you all as tired of this as I am?
Bear in mind that the religious right are individuals and organizations who are part of a vast ecosystem of conservatives with an obscene amount of money and more influence and access than they deserve, which they use to create alliances with Congressional leaders AND pay handsome salaries to 'policy analysts" whose job consists of being interviewed by friendly pundits on places like Fox News - which is the most watched news network in the country - or writing nonsensical books hyped up as intellectual or common sense and bought in bulk by other conservatives to run them up best seller lists.
And this is while they are also plugged into mega self-sustaining network of twitter addresses, dark money funded news sources - such as The Federalist or Washington Examiner - all working together to overwhelm us with the volume of their cacophony so that they can control the argument by sending out a single narrative.
And what's the narrative? They are being picked on. They are being persecuted. They are victims of an evil encroachment of an American society which apparently solely consists of them and people who worship the way they do. It's so sad that I can almost picture these folks wiping their eyes with $100 bills instead of tissues as they endlessly repeat the same sob stories of persecution.
This idea that religious conservatives have been shut up or pushed to the back is a lie. And anyone in Hawley's position speaking it has to know that it's a lie.
No one wants them to shut up. We just want them to acknowledge that they are not the only people who matter in this country. We want them to realize that their religious beliefs doesn't give them any right to place themselves on a pedestal while leaving the rest of us, particularly LGBTQ people, below them in accepted subjugation. We want them to remember that America is not their country to be ruled solely by their whims or dictates. And that rights and privileges belong to all Americans and are not items for them to dole out or withhold in accordance to their religious beliefs.
They were reminded of all this on Monday by SCOTUS, so now they are throwing a tantrum. Let them. And if the message doesn't get through to them this time, then we will continue to do the same dance until it finally does.
No matter how long it takes.
