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I think that Adm. Mike Mullen’s powerful statement today on ending discrimination in the armed services is driving the fundies a bit crazy. Chris Matthews hosted a debate between Aubrey Sarvis of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network and Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council about the military’s don’t ask don’t tell policy, and eventually we got around to Sprigg’s real agenda. Do watch the whole thing to see Sprigg’s bankrupt arguments and Aubrey Sarvis’ rebuttals (“No one should have to lie to fight and die for their country”), but skip to around 4:49 for the punch line:
MATTHEWS: What should a young woman or man, 22 years old, out of college, officer material, they want to serve their country. But they’re gay. What should they do? They want to serve their country?
SPRIGG: Well, they should serve it in some civilian capacity, and not join the military.
MATTHEWS: Why not?
SPRIGG: Because the presence of homosexuals in the military is incompatible with good order, morale, discipline and unit cohesion. That’s exactly what Congress found in 1993 and that’s what the law states!
[snip]
SPRIGG: Don’t ask don’t tell is the Clinton compromise policy which is actually incompatible with the law that was passed by Congress. There’s almost universal misunderstanding about that. I’d like to see us do away with this don’t ask don’t tell, and simply enforce the law that was passed by Congress.
[snip]
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you Peter, do you think people choose to be gay?
SPRIGG: Uh, people do not choose to have same-sex attractions, but they do choose to have homosexual conduct [...]
MATTHEWS: Do you think we should outlaw gay behavior?
SPRIGG: Well, I think certainly-
MATTHEWS: I’m just asking you, should we outlaw gay behavior?
SPRIGG: I think that the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned the sodomy laws in this country, was wrongly decided. I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.
MATTHEWS: So we should outlaw gay behavior.
SPRIGG: Yes.
It took all of eight minutes to get Sprigg to admit that he thinks gay sex should be illegal and that Supreme Court “wrongly” banned anti-sodomy laws. The notion that this is about “unit cohesion” or “military readiness” can be seen by this display as completely bogus: this is about controlling people’s personal lives, and demanding that the whole country live under a theocratic agenda.
Sadly, even Michael O’Hanlon of the so-called “liberal” Brookings Institution would rather bow to this need for discrimination in the military. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, however, does not. And that has teased out the real agenda of the antigay movement.
UPDATE: Mike Stark talked to some Senators on the Hill about DADT today.
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I’m against gays serving in the military.
I’m also against straights serving in the military.
Oh gee, how would anyone pay for college. Financial servitude.
I hope these wingnuts keep talking about their hate. It exposes them and let’s the rest of the country get a glimpse of how stupid they sound. Maybe it will shame some people into actually thinking.
They really are deeply rabid homophobes. Coddling them with any limitation on gay rights is only making this worse.
1910 much?
Just nothing like good ol’ fashion cruel prejudice and hatred. How sad.
Many young gay people have told stories of similar cruelty and rejection from their own parents who,then, often have a change of heart. We can hope.
Twain, reader, RevBev
Have you read any of the liveblogs of the Prop H8 trial?
I’m a straight guy who’s also a firm believer in repealing DADT and the legalization of gay marriage.
That said, I can’t help but speculate that the Obama administrations’ sudden turn to repealing DADT is a tactical “culture war” gambit to throw the LGBT community a bone, “re-energize” the base, redirect the focus of many netroots bloggers, and deflect attention from other administration problems, not the least of which is the sad sack of shit that HCR has become.
Proselytizing wingnuts should be barred from serving in the Military.
Yes, all of them.
quit it
Hey Rev what would Jesus say about that excuse for a human who was spewing such hate and bigotry and coming off as a man of Jesus?? I don’t think he would be happy about it.. He was a man of Peace and Love. How those people misuse what he really had to say to us all.
Shorter Admiral Mullen: “Men and women shouldn’t have to lie about who they are.”
Shorter Senator McCain: “It’s OK to lie about who you are. We Repugs do it all the time.”
Agree. A boner to the LGBT. Just wait ’til that yearlong military study gets released in the next more R (majority R?) congress & see what happens.
Yup ~ some. And all the summaries. It’s just endlessly shocking. I don’t even *understand* how anyone can think so irrationally. Kos nails it by calling his new book: “American Taliban.” But that will create quite the stink, I think.
Why? Name a legit U.S. enemy that requires the U.S. to spend more than the rest of the world combined on military.
The report at Mike Stark’s place (linked at the end of the post) talks about the predominance of fundamentalist Christian *values* in the military as being part of the problem. I found that shocking too.
Revealing to be sure.
Sprigg is most likely just pretending to be a Christian because it serves his purposes. Look how well pretending worked for Decider Bush.
Your statement clearly implies doing away with the military.
What does Jesus have to do with Christianity anyhow?
I have heard that the Air Force Academy suffers from a strong evangelical Christian infection.
Christian fundamentalist bigotry reigns at US Air Force Academy
A yearlong study. That is disgraceful. People have had more than 10 years to adjust to this and it has only become more entrenched. These social extremists are being coddled by all these “policies” and slow tactics.
Obama should have created an executive order LAST YEAR and let them all whine and whinge on their own damn time.
It’s not like we’d start LOSING in Afghanistan in people were “allowed” to be out.
Oh, so you think because I am against anyone serving in the military, that the military will disappear?
To most Christians he was a inspirational Leader and speaker who help many people.
Actual Jesus or cartoon Jesus (the one preferred by conservatives)?
If that is the plan, they are playing with nuclear fire and they should know that. They will lost the LGBT vote forever if they haven’t already. They will never be forgiven for these slaps and disrespect even if they manage to fulfil all their promises.
Agree, and sadly so do many in the LGBT community.
Color me unsurprised at this creep’s slavering homophobia. IMO this kind of knee-jerk bigotry usually reveals a deep fear of the person’s own mixed emotions towards their sexuality. As with most ReThuglican bigotry and hate, I suspect this jerk is projecting a lot.
I get why Badwater says Sprigg is “pretending to be a Christian,” but I disagree. This is the prevelant “value” that’s been promulgated out their in christianist fundie-land as what a “good moral christian” should think, believe and feel. Morally repugnant as these types are, I am of the mind that they really “believe” it.
Good for Tweety getting Sprigg to spell out exactly how he feels and thinks. I get tired of the bobbing and weaving to make their disgustingness look better. BAH.
I hope the military does the correct thing here. In the 21st C, these antidiluvean attitudes are despicable, useless, morally corrupt, bankrupt and frankly, a huge waste of time.
Part of it, though, is Kabuki show (not on Sprigg’s part). The usual: divide and conquer, distract, distract, distract show.
you so silly
Take your pick. Although I would ask when was the last time Jesus initiated a war, even an insurgency? What the [Jesus] Christians don’t understand is that he was an antiauthoritarian. How ironic that he (assuming he existed as portrayed in the gospels) created an authoritarian state.
Just like libertarians and “freedom” and “liberty,” so too with the bigots and their “we might upset the morale, discipline and unit cohesion!”
I would prefer the military be like an athiest’s corpse at their own funeral. All dressed up and nowhere to go.
I hope that is so. (my 29) But that is not what comes across in the pronouncements of those who proclaim to pronounce on account of Christianity.
8 minutes to admit your an antigay bigot come on African Americans, Women serve you don’t even want to admit your a bigot on tv.
We have an agreement!
I’m happy to have these fake Christians rant and rave because they are leading the Rs right over the cliff. They will probably take some Dem seats this time but that won’t last if they continue as they are going. They compromised on their “purity” clause in the platform to keep the nuts close but they can’t stop time and things change every day. The sane Rs will have to decide to stay with them or get off the crazy train and they’re dead either way.
Why does this joker think Lawrence vs Texas was wrongly decided whats his legal reasoning?
Say what? I demand proof!
Moving upstairs.
No He didn’t create it, it wasn’t created till long after he was Dead by some who believed in him and then Power got the best of them. And 2000 yrs has seen it morph and morph and splinter many times over..
And not all followers of Christ spew such hate in the Fundies are still a minority in the Christian world and most are just plain crazy, I use the old testament and use only the violence in it to believe in… Fucking Fools.
And part of the challenge is that we are also called to love the “excuse” as well…Lord knows it’s not easy….even Martin Luther King tried to love the haters…..The ugliness itself gets exposed.
MLK said “let no man pull you low enough to hate him.” Good words to live by.
See? This is what I’ve had to put up with for 63 years. And people ask me “Why are you so angry?”
Thanks for your note..should not be hard to understand, right? At 63, you’ve seen alot.
Did anyone ask what Law School Sprigg attended? Just curious.
Count me as one of many atheists who is sick and f-ing tired of Christians forcing their religious views on everyone in the country. There’s nothing remotely “Christ-like” about these people.
Unrelated, but watching Admiral Mullen on tv the other night my gaydar went off, just lightly. I would not be at all suprised to find out 20 years from now that he was gay.
Yep. They need a year because they want the votes for 2010 before they decide they just can’t make it happen.
Count me as one of the Christians who is sick and tired of Christians forcing their religious views on everyone in the country. It’s bad enough when I agree with the views but don’t think they should be forced. When I don’t even agree with the views, it makes all Christians look like heartless crazies in addition to being bad policy in mixing church and state.
But wouldn’t it be great if whether people were having sodomy were the most important thing we had to worry about when it came to our armed services? Even if I were dead set against it, that would be a welcome change from all the other war crap we have to worry about. Can’t talk about torture done in all our names, but let’s have lots of hearings on what those gays might be doing in their private lives.
Gays are icky. You know all those Latin phrases lawyers throw around all the time? At least one of them must translate to gays are icky. If not, then God says gays are icky and that’s enough legal precedent in a fine Christian nation, dammit!
The force of their opposition and hatred of gays and homosexual behavior leads one to suspect that in their hearts they realize that they themselves are gay. In their haste to deny it, they go to extremes. It’s sort of like Adolph Eichmann denying his Jewish ancestry. Can anyone prove me wrong?
There are not only christian dominionists in our military, but neo-nazis as well. The far right send their children into the military in order to get them prepared for the real fight they believe is coming to America. According to them, there is going to be “Armegeddon” right here in America and its going to be these far right Christofascists against the rest of us.
I believe that’s why Brian Brown and Maggie Gallagher have create an empire on their own fears, prejudices, and internalized homophobia. Their Catholic religious upbringing has created within them a self-hatred, sexual repression that coupled with religious brainwashing, makes them project their self-hatred onto the LGBT community. These people have serious psychological issues.
Actually, when that buybull of theirs was translated, the word abomination was incorrectly translated. It should have been “unclean”, hence the icky part. We are unclean if we eat shrimp, wear cotton and linen together, or have buttsex. These people are obsessed with cleanliness, so much so, that they actually pretend that they only have sex for procreation and we know that’s a lie.
Meh, don’t ask don’t tell is really bad.
It provides a false hope of a career in the military for gays.
It promotes internal witchhunts that divide and undermine unit cohesion.
It blatently encourages people to lie to those whom they will be entrusting thier lives to.
I think this is just a pure in/out call. Either gays are allowed in the military or they are not. Clinton’s efforts may have been well meaning but I don’t beleive they have helped the situation.
On a side note, right wingers really love to bring thier reactionary social beliefs into the front and center whenever they are in the dog house on other political issues.
Let’s see China, Russia, Iran and North Korea all have a policy of keeping gays out of their Military. So it’s nice to know that Senator John McCain is supporting their position.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — Don’t Explain
“Because the presence of ****** in the military is incompatible with good order, morale, discipline and unit cohesion. That’s exactly what Congress found in 1*** and that’s what the law states!”
Substitute Black or Women for ****** and a different date and you have the only grounds that SpRIGG has for his point.
Oddly he admits that people can control behavior, but not sexual attraction…so in fact there is no reason to deny anyone access to the military based on one being gay…any more than one should prevent heterosexuals from entering the military because some of them may become unprofessionally involved with subordinates, etc.
“Mr. Sprigg is an ordained Baptist minister. Before coming to FRC, he served as pastor of Clifton Park Center Baptist Church in Clifton Park, N.Y. Mr. Sprigg previously served for ten years as a professional ACTOR and unit leader in Covenant Players, an international Christian DRAMA ministry. Prior to his career in ministry, Mr. Sprigg worked in the government and non-profit sectors, including service as economic development assistant to the late Congressman Robert F. Drinan (D-Mass.).
Mr. Sprigg received the Master of Divinity degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (Mass.). He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Drew University (N.J.), with a double major in political science and economics.”
……………………………………………………………..
Not a law degree in there…just some not-very-prestigious schools and a career as a Drama Minister. Seems he is a case of “I’m Not A Lawyer…but I can act like one on TV.”