How To Torpedo Your Own Argument!
Well, the opposition to Prop 8 has finally retaliated to last week’s “No Mob Violence” ad that was placed in the NYTimes in defense of Mormons and their role in the passage of that state constitutional amendment. I first noted the meme in an op-ed in a paper from Fall Church, MA. It was written by a guy by the name of Wayne Besen. Besen was so enraged that he took his arguments to a bit of the bigger time in an ad he placed in the Salt Lake Tribune which resulted in a Peggy Fletcher Stack story in that same SLTrib. We’ll focus on the Stack/SLT piece, but Besen’s comment in it and Besen’s op-ed argue essentially the same things, and you can look for more of it as this moves forward. There are two basic lines of response. The first:
Those protests were “remarkably peaceful,” Besen said. “They took isolated incidents of people misbehaving and exploited that to make it seem like mob violence. It is immoral.”
Protests are, in and of themselves, on the edge of violence. Further, actual violence has been far from isolated. Vandalism was fairly widespread, traffic was disrupted, people have lost their jobs, and many active in the YES campaign received threatening phone calls or direct personal threats. So maybe it was not the Watts Riots or the post-RodneyKing riots, but it was definitively a mob-based effort to enforce its will with inherent threats of violence at those extreme levels. This is a bit like arguing that because I only beat someone up, it’s not that big a deal when compared to Charles Manson.
But the argument that is a problem is this one:
Beyond the issue of whether gay protests constituted a “mob,” Besen argues that the signers of the earlier ad are hypocrites for saying they will not use anti-religious rhetoric.
“These new defenders of the Mormon faith have long been the most prolific Mormon bashers in the nation,” Besen said. “They have nothing in common but their anti-gay rhetoric. Promoting legal discrimination [against gays] with a group that would happily discriminate against you is a strategic disaster in the long run.”
That, dear friends, leaves a mark, though it is more limited than Besen would have us believe. Most of the signatories to that ad were “neutrals” during the Romney primary campaign. This is the old, tired and less-than-courageous stance taken by the majority of Evangelicals – “Mormons are not at all like us, but itsOKtovoteforone.” But one signatory needs this heat in a big way.
Marvin Olasky signed the ad as a faculty member of King’s College in NYC. Fair enough, but Mr. Olasky is also the Editor-in-Chief of World Magazine, home of Joel Belz now infamous and highly bigoted piece. In fairness, Belz is the founder of World and may simply have “pulled rank” on Olasky,but if the NYTimes ad reflects Olasky’s true stance on the subject then his resignation from World should have followed closely on the heals of the appearance of the Belz piece, if not preceeded it, as he would have known it was coming.
As things now stand, Olasky presence at both World and in this ad serve only to negate the effectiveness of the ad. What is really sad is it was easy to see this coming. Lowell and I discussed it when the ad appeared, but we did not write about it because we did not want to give ammunition to the other side. But now that the shot has been fired, it is time for Olasky to stand up and be counted.
But even the neutrals harm us – their stance during the primary compagn does lend the ad an air of “convenience” that robs it of the passion and power that it would otherwise have. Political allies are political allies and we have to defend them in all aspects of the political arena, or we lose our effectiveness. This ad represents a correct first step for the “neutrals” to start to build that strong defense.
But for Olasky, the task is much harder. He needs to make things clear on where he stands and he needs to repudiate the wrong that has gone before.
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CarlH on 12 Dec 2008 at 11:41 am #
The fact that this group would “respond” to the New York Times “No Mob Veto” ad in the Salt Lake Tribune speaks volumes in and of itself. The fact that the ad is also a blatant fundraising effort only heightens the irony–perhaps they need to raise funds in Salt Lake City to be able to afford to run something in New York City!
Also on the Proposition 8 fallout front, Francis J. Beckwith writes an article at First Things‘ “On the Square” with the title, Same-Sex Marriage and the Failure of Justificatory Liberalism, which has some interesting things to say about tolerance, as well as orthodoxies right and left in the public arena.
Since I haven’t seen it yet on Article VI Blog, here’s the link to the very belated, and rather tepid, Los Angeles Times December 10 editorial that at least decries the intimidation tactics of the backlash, while coming very close to “blaming the victim.”
Article VI Blog » Blog Archive » Who’s Running For What – Evangelical News – and more… on 22 Oct 2009 at 6:52 am #
[...] Marvin Olasky has been one of the more perplexing leaders of Evangelicalism we have encountered here. There was an interesting blog-based interview with him that appeared this week in two parts. One of the more interesting questions was that he was asked to define “evangelical.” [...]