Chris Broussard is for lack of a better word a bigot

[jthig32]

Originally Posted by Jack.Kerr

Jthig, your comments here and elsewhere on this subject are pretty moderate, and while I sincerely appreciate that, I think you're falling into the trap of 'false equivalence'. That's not a dead horse-argument you're beating, it's more of a jackass's argument, and frankly you seem a lot more intelligent than that. I'm going to disagree that Broussard's comments don't reveal underlying bigotry. Here's why.

If someone says to you: "I think it's a sin for people of different races to get married.", or "I believe it goes against biblical teaching for a woman to work outside the home, or for a woman to have a position of authority over a man.", do you fail to understand what they're saying and where they're coming from? Do you reserve judgment about such a person's racial bigotry or religious sexism, and assume that they have a reasoned basis for their views, even if they don't go on to explain that basis to you?

I can't believe that you would. In fact, I think that most people, whether they agree with such views or not, understand immediately what the person saying such things thinks about matters of race and gender equality. And I also think that most people today would regard such views as racially bigoted and sexually chauvinistic, whether the speaker grounds the views in scripture or not.

Same with Broussard's comments. True, he didn't equate homosexuality with pedophilia, bestiality or polygamy as bigots of old would have (and as many still do). He has moderated his views for public consumption such that he only equates homosexuality with the lighter, milder 'sins' of sex outside marriage, adultery, and whatever he understands 'fornication' to mean. (According to some fundamentalists, he could've added the sins of contraception and masturbation, but he might've been laughed off the public stage.) But he still couches the rationale for his views as being from a religious perspective, by saying "As a Christian....", and by condemning homosexuality as "unrepentant sin" and "living in open rebellion to God". He doesn't nuance his opinion as to whether it was based on Old Testament Levitical law, or New Testament (just to make things interesting), but it doesn't matter--either way, resorting to religious texts as a justification for condemning social behavior just makes the bigotry religiously-grounded bigotry. And as we all know, that's the most traditional kind. (FYI: I imagine you know this already, but the origin of the term 'bigot' in 16th-century France referred to people who held particularly sanctimonious religious views, and who observed them hypocritically; thus bigotry, religion and hypocrisy have long been intimately intertwined in a kind of vile three-way.)

So you say, "Okay, big deal. He made an ill-advised, ill-timed comment. You say it's bigotry, I say it's not. No harm, no foul. We'll just have to agree to disagree." And to a point, I can agree. In the bigger scheme of things, Broussard's comments probably only added to the list of slurs and hateful comments that closeted gay teens endure every day, and because they came from a distance, the sting was probably minimal, or at least one among many for the day. Broussard's comments, while repugnant, probably don't shift the public debate in anti-gay bigots' favor. His comments only resonated with the shrinking audience of anti-gay fundamentalist evangelical bigots, and he looked like such an utter fool, that in the big picture he probably turned off more neutral people. ESPN apologizes (sort of) and Broussard tries to sidestep the blowback by fake-apologizing (sort of).

But as you point out, Jthig, public condemnations of homosexuality as 'sin', 'evil' and 'disordered' DO have consequences, sometimes violent, sometimes fatal. In the recent marriage equality debate in France, the archbishop of Paris observed that extending marriage rights to homosexuals would be how "..a violent society develops...". About the same time, the leader of the main political group opposing the impending marriage equality legislation threatened French President Hollande by saying: "Hollande wants blood, and he will get it." Bullets and gunpowder were mailed to some French legislators, and shortly thereafter there occurred in France a spate of extremely violent gay bashings in which gay men were attacked, and had their faces beaten into bloody pulp while having anti-gay slurs shouted at them. An as of Friday, the Archbishop of San Francisco (and convicted drunk driver) Salvatore Cordileone published a response to passage of marriage equality in Rhode Island in which he asserted that secular law can mean nothing over church tradition and teaching. A religious leader stacks the kindling, a political extremist pours the gas, and thugs on the street light the match.

Even worse, are the involvements of Western anti-gay fundamentalist groups in countries like Uganda and Ethiopia, who go and stir up hatred against gays and lesbians, and help anti-gay politicians in these countries craft legislation criminalizing homosexuality (not homosexual acts, homosexual EXISTENCE), punishable by death. And this is not just something from years back, it's ongoing, and going on today.

And it makes you wonder, whether some of the proud and unabashed bigots posting here (Dude?) would vote for such legislation in their state, or in the United States, if they thought they could get by with it, if they thought they had the support for it. Is the only thing holding people like this back broader public support? Will they just resort to individual acts of violence against individual gays or lesbians instead? I'm not that concerned about a guy like Dude. He sounds like he's too old to be very dangerous, even if he wanted to. But what about his impressionable teen-aged son(s), with still-developing impulse control? What about the kids he indoctrinates in Sunday School, or in his Boy Scout troop, or the ones he coaches on a youth basketball team? How will the teen-aged kids react to the derogatory slurs that you can be sure he throws around in their presence? Will it make them think it's okay to bully that gay kid at school? Or if they get a little alcohol in them when they're older, will they go beat up a gay man somewhere? Just for kicks?

Words matter. Just dressing up your bigoted views to make them more respectable for public airing doesn't obviate the underlying bigotry. And bigotry (or even just the dissemination of negative attitudes towards gays and lesbians, if that's what you want to call it) breeds hate. Hate corrodes, sometimes slowly, sometimes explosively. I can't imagine that a truly decent person of whatever faith would want to stand by while words like 'sin' and 'evil' and 'disordered' get rained down on gay teens, or on impressionable young teens who might grow up to harm them.

This is well thought out and reasoned post. But the issue I have with tying bigotry to belief and not to attitude and actions is that you leave no room for disagreement. Where is the room for one's personal belief system? You're basically saying that society decides which core issue are foundational and are not allowed to be disagreed with. And I just flatly disagree.

Christians also believe that being married to more than one woman is a sin. Are they all bigoted against the polygamist community? Some sects of Christianity believe that consuming alcohol is a sin. Mormons believe that consuming coffee and tea is forbidden. Are all these people bigots?

Having a belief system doesn't make someone a bigot. How you express those opinions and what actions those opinions cause are what determine whether you have hate in your heart towards those that you disagree with.

I wholeheartedly agree that public condemnation of homosexuality is a dangerous issue, because of our unfortunate history and the fundamentalistic Christian's all-too-frequent inability to following Jesus' teaching of loving the sinner and hating the sin. Which is why I cringe when someone like Broussard takes to the airways and says the things he said. But I cringe just as much when people who are simply trying to live the life they have chosen and express the views they believe in are accused of being hateful and bigoted for daring to have an opinion that doesn't match the majority of society.

When you compare homophobia to racism, I think you miss the mark (and not because of the choice vs biology debate). I think you miss the mark because racism, by its very nature, was always presented in actions and hatred. No one would ever try to make the argument that being black is "wrong", unless they were also attaching to that to an action of hatred or violence. No one ever had an opportunity to try to convince an African American that they should change...because that was impossible. So the issue of belief vs hatred/judgement was never there.

However, with homosexuality (as with all other actions that some consider sins), you have what some view as a choice. And even with the evidence of biology, many Christians would argue that many people are biologically disposed to other "harmful lifestyles" such as drug addiction or alcoholism. So some Christians, based on their chosen faith, will take the opportunity to express their desire for change without attaching hate or prejudice with it. And those that would peacefully do so should be allowed without being accused of being bigoted.