 |
| Sen. Rubio exploits his faith to obscure bigotry. |
"Claiming that gays are intolerant on a television show owned by the
man who falsely blamed gays for the worst terrorist attack on American
soil strikes me as something an actual Christian couldn't do with a
straight face.But Rubio did with not only a straight face but also with a figurative fake halo over his head."
There is no polite way to put this so I am just going to come out and say it.
Senator Marco Rubio is a liar. He is a charlatan. He is a fraud who is no different than so many so-called Bible-believing Republicans who exploit religion and "their faith" in an effort to provide cover for their homophobia.
Today, he
was given a friendly interview on Pat Robertson's
700 Club in which he played "the game" pretty good. Amongst other things, he said:
“We are at the water’s edge of the argument that mainstream Christian
teaching is hate speech,” he explained, “because today we’ve reached the
point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage, you
are labeled a homophobe and a hater. So what’s the next step after
that, after they’re done going after individuals? The next step is to
argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity, the catechism of
the Catholic Church, is hate speech. That’s a real and present danger.”
The "game" I speak of has been played on many occasions and by many people from one-note politicians to two-bit media hacks with badly researched books to sell. It's the claim that gays are actually the intolerant ones and that we are automatically labeling "Christians" as haters and bigots if we don't agree with their speech or beliefs.
It's a deliberate tactic used by those against marriage equality and it is designed to take attention away from the actual folks we should be concerned about, i.e. same-sex families and their children.
And the tactic also has a much more nefarious purpose. It also takes attention away from a crucial part of the battle over marriage equality and lgbt equality in general. Rubio and those on his side can take about their "faith" continuously, but note that while they do this, they never talk about their tactics.
Tactics like
deliberately playing the African-American and gay community against one another,
or implying that marriage equality will
corrupt and indoctrinate children, even while one of their
leaders said that this idea was a deliberate lie,
or attempting to
deceive the Supreme Court with a phony study speaking about the so-called negative effects of same-sex households.
Even if you didn't talk about these things, one shouldn't forget whose program on which Rubio chose to espouse his faith.
The 700 Club, owned by Pat Roberston, i.e. the same man who (along with the late Jerry Falwell)
blamed 9/11 partly on gays.
Claiming that gays are intolerant on a television show owned by the man who falsely blamed gays for the worst terrorist attack on American soil strikes me as something an actual Christian couldn't do with a straight face.
But Rubio did with not only a straight face but also with a figurative fake halo over his head.
And even if one ignored all of those things, Rubio still has some explaining to do regarding the host of one of his fundraisers who
has ties to an African dictator who endorsed gay beheadings.
Naturally, Rubio won't mention these offenses committed by those on his side of the argument or himself. He will just drone on and on about his faith and how he feels that his beliefs are in danger of being labeled as "intolerant." Meanwhile, people will ignore the tactics those on his side commit, which are
the reasons why they are referred to as bigots or homophobes.
It's not Rubio's beliefs which are the problem. It's what he may be deliberately omitting that's the problem. That is crux of the matter. That is the reason why Rubio is such a fake Christian in a congregation of evangelical and ecclesiastical liars. He is the epitome of what religious right conservatives are in contrast to what they claim to be.
Don't be deceived by people like Rubio. Their eyes may be looking towards heaven, but you can't mistake the smell of brimstone on their bodies.
