By Claire Chretien
Instead of condemning the gunman who attacked the Family Research Council, he attacked the group for its traditional, mainstream beliefs on marriage. Leftists are quick to label any group with whom they disagree ideologically a “hate group.” The left’s criticism of the FRC represents the classic liberal move of preaching tolerance, except when it comes to groups whose politics they don’t like.
In lamenting the alleged culture of intolerance in America, the left bullied eHarmony, a private company run by Christian Neil Warren, into providing services for same-sex couples in a ludicrous New Jersey class-action lawsuit in 2005, despite the fact that eHarmony is privately run, there are myriad websites that offer same-sex matchmaking and plaintiff Eric McKinley was in no way obligated to use eHarmony’s services. Instead of tolerating eHarmony’s founder’s beliefs or taking his business elsewhere, McKinley demanded that the company change for him. As Michelle Malkin put it, “This case is akin to a meat-eater suing a vegetarian restaurant for not offering him a ribeye or a female patient suing a vasectomy doctor for not providing her hysterectomy services.”
Chai Feldblum, a 2009 Obama appointee for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, wrote in a 2006 Brooklyn Law Review article that in protecting homosexual “identity,” it’s okay to trample on others’ freedom to believe what they wish about homosexuality: “Protecting one group’s identity liberty may, at times, require that we burden others’ belief liberty. This is an inherent and irreconcilable reality of our complex society.” That doesn’t sound very tolerant, does it?
Feldblum also played a key role in pushing the euphemistically named Employment Non-Discrimination Act, legislation around which gay activists rallied because it aimed to punish employers who object to hiring the “transgendered” – never mind that some religious organizations might oppose hiring a person who practices a lifestyle directly contrary to their teaching.
The left’s offenses against freedom of expression under the guise of promoting tolerance are widespread and common. Therefore, it’s no surprise that instead of calling the shooting at the FRC a hate crime – the shooter did, after all, fire a nine-millimeter Sig Sauer handgun inside the FRC because of the FRC’s ideology – Mr. Gaddis criticized the FRC’s pro-life and pro-traditional marriage platform, fatuously citing the biased Southern Poverty Law Center’s label of the FRC as a “hate group,” a brand that countless other conservative groups have had thrust upon them by the radical SPLC, including a multitude of Christian ministries and virtually any group opposed to illegal immigration or gay marriage. Never mind the platform of alleged shooter Floyd Lee Corkins II, a volunteer at the D.C. Center for LGBT Community, and the possibility that Corkins might be the intolerant one pushing his views on others, weapon in hand.
ABC News was quick to incorrectly assume that the Colorado movie theater shooter was a member of the Tea Party; President Obama was quick to condemn the shooting of late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller in 2009, yet slow to comment on the shooting at the FRC. Ironically, until a few months ago, President Obama also believed that marriage was reserved exclusively for one man and one woman and no one accused him of being a bigot.
Valuing traditional marriage is not hateful; opposing same-sex marriage for religious reasons is not bigoted. Assuming that all Christian groups who follow their religion’s teachings on marriage are evil is ignorant. There’s nothing evil about a difference of opinion and nothing extreme about opposing the left’s attempts to redefine marriage. What is truly extreme is ostracizing and slandering a political group as an intolerant promoter of hate when all it has done is disagree with politically correct ideas.
Studies.
