THE QUEER REPUBLICAN STRATEGY

While Democrats however ineffectively of late, have attempted to articulate an us against the rich strategy and Republicans have yelled class warfare; it is the Republicans going back to the "Southern strategy" of the Nixon years who have most effectively sought to divide us as a nation for political gain; white against people of color.

The euphemism today of course is being against Affirmative Action which is understood to be against African Americans. We saw this most blatantly in BUSH THE LESSOR'S appearance while running for President at the racist Bob Jones university...This racist Protestant University with its mantra against Catholics and inter-racial dating is a regular stop for national Republicans seeking to establish their credentials with the core Republican bigot base.

Another euphemism used by Republicans effectively is an anti-immigration agenda which says to the core bigoted constituency that we Republicans are anti-Hispanic, anti Asian, and anti African.

This coming Presidential season it seems the strategy will shift emphasis to an anti gay (QUEER) campaign that seems certain once again to energize the bigoted core constituency of the Bush Republican Party.

As Mark Twain noted: I BELIEVE THAT OUR HEAVENLY FATHER INVENTED MAN BECAUSE HE WAS DISAPPOINTED IN THE MONKEY. Seeming to validate that assessment we have the Christian right mouthing the canard that our Founding Fathers based America on a Judeo/Christian model/principles.

In the words of Louis D Brandeis; "The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions, and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone--the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized man."

Our Founding Fathers who fled religious tyranny and were products not of religious Christianity but a secular intellectualism known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment embracing not a Christian dogma of acceptance and faith but a belief in the rational intellect's ability to find meaning and a disdain and mistrust of the absolutism of religiosity.

Thus enshrined in the Constitution is the Separation of Church and State and the endorsement of the individual pursuit of happiness unfettered by government righteousness. The notion that religious folks who find homosexuality offensive should have the right to impose their beliefs on others, to appropriate the definition of words like marriage to themselves and enforce by law the inability of another group to use that word or ceremony is anathema to our Constitutional guarantees of individual freedom.

Nothing precludes the individual group; whether the Boy Scouts or the Catholic Church or the Klu Klux Klan from setting up its own norms of membership whether based on race, gender, religion or sexual orientation, but the notion that government should tell its citizens how to pursue individual happiness is anti American. Sort of reminds one of the Taliban.

Nelson Mandela said: "A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred; he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone's else's freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity."

The recent attempts by the Roman Catholic bishops to insinuate themselves into the political rights of homosexuals is un American. The Bishops recently urging States to withhold recognition of same sex marriages and not to grant health benefits or inheritance rights to homosexual couples further under scores the Churches lack of credibility to speak on sexual morality (in view of the recent abuse scandal). And of course we have the fact that only 4% of Married American Catholics of childbearing age use the church approved natural family planning method. For along with the Catholic Bishop's statements on homosexuality this month came from the American Bishops their firm opposition to artificial birth control. ...AND THE BEAT GOES ON...AND IF YOU'RE A CATHOLIC HOPEFULLY YOU GOT THE RHYTHM!