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Jennifer HemmingsenI'm a columnist and member of The Gazette's editorial board. I live in Iowa City. Twitter: @jhemmingsen, or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hemmingsenyah |
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Family Leader’s bullying lesson
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Photo: family leader
Witnessing the Family Leader’s long, slow free-fall to irrelevance is like watching a car careen off a cliff in slow motion.
The damage is done, the trajectory is set. There’s nothing to do but cringe and brace yourself for the inevitable fiery crash.
The Leader’s seemingly unending quest to alienate Iowa’s reasonable majority stands in especially stark contrast to other groups’ current efforts to increase tolerance and promote civil rights for all Iowans.
Take, for example, One Iowa’s coffee klatsch campaign to humanize same-sex marriage and gay rights issues for Iowans who are on the fence by introducing them to gay friends and neighbors whose lives are measurably better because of moves toward equality.
Meanwhile, the Bob Vander Plaats vehicle is picking a fight with an anti-bullying conference whose controversial platform is that all students deserve to feel safe and supported in school.
It’s almost sad to watch the group have to contort itself into increasingly uncomfortable-looking positions to keep mining the outrage that has fueled the Family Leader leader’s lukewarm success.
This time, they are railing against the Iowa Governors Conference on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Youth, trying to spin the conference’s anti-bullying agenda into a salacious pro-gay conspiracy. They called on Gov. Terry Branstad to ask Iowa Safe Schools, which organizes the conference, to remove the word “Governor” from the event’s name. Branstad, rightly, brushed off the group’s request.
That wasn’t enough for Vander Plaats’ crowd, which took its fight to We the People, asking on its website if we approve of “a conference that supports immoral, premarital sexual behavior among Iowa students,” or the governor “lending his title” to such an abomination.
Gross mischaracterization aside, my guess is that most people’s answer would be: yawn.
For years now, the Family Leader has been trying to tell us our culture is on fire. You can’t blame us for being a little tired of the alarms. The fact is, junior high and high school are no picnic for kids who are different. Bullying isn’t a problem we can afford to take lightly, or that groups should irresponsibly pervert to try to convert it into political hay.
Branstad apparently knows the first rule about dealing with bullies: They wilt when you don’t give them the attention they crave.
And it seems to me that Iowans are becoming equally wise to the Family Leader’s bullying ways.
Comments: (319) 339-3154;
jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net
I really can’t stand all the hate that group spreads across this state. The Senate district 18 race made me despise them any more. I wish the Republican party would just disown them.
Bob who? Family what?
Someone’s into his sixteenth minute…
Some bullies, when ignored, also go the opposite direction and become madder and louder, making it harder to ignore them.
That seems to be what Vander Plaats and the Family Leader are doing now.
This article nearly brought me to tears.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/one-towns-war-on-gay-teens-20120202 I have three teenagers and life is difficult enough for them to have these kinds of things happening around them
I have so much animosity towards Vander Plaats and his kind. Claiming Christian values while promoting hate? Bachman and Santorum fall into this category too. (See article) Santorum tweets yesterday: “7M people had their rights stripped away today by activist 9th Circuit judges. As President I will work to protect marriage.” HUH-WHAT? Vander Plaats actions resulting in three Iowa Supreme Court justices being removed from the bench because they disagreed with his perverted ideals made me sick. He was fond of saying that they were legislating from the bench, which I found rather hypocritical considering his push to promote his agenda by removing the very qualified people we entrusted with interpreting our Constitution. By doing so he indicated he knew better than they and he in a way attempted to legislate via his own tactics. We’ve heard presidential candidates use the same rhetoric when they disagree with the something. Newt thinks he knows better than our federal Supreme Court what is legal per our Constitution. Both he and Vander Plaats should at least attend law school and practice their craft before insinuating they know better. Christians of all faiths should be standing up to these people and admonishing them for perverting their religion. Christ was accepting, not exclusionary.
Here’s Santorum, telling a gay man he doesn’t deserve the privilege of marriage.
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/02/03/418688/santorum-gay-marriage-privilege/?mobile=nc
“Santorum tweets yesterday: ’7M people had their rights stripped away today by activist 9th Circuit judges. As President I will work to protect marriage.’ HUH-WHAT?”
The votes of 7 million people were overturned by a couple of lawyers in black robes. The people were told to drop dead, that their opinions don’t matter; “you don’t get to vote on defining society’s institutions, we do”. But I guess the results of elections only matter to you when you agree with them.
“Vander Plaats actions resulting in three Iowa Supreme Court justices being removed from the bench because they disagreed with his perverted ideals made me sick.”
“Perverted ideals”? Like saying that two perverts playing house is not morally equivalent to say, our grandparents, who were married for life, had and raised a half dozen kids? If that’s perversion, count me in.
“He was fond of saying that they were legislating from the bench, which I found rather hypocritical considering his push to promote his agenda by removing the very qualified people we entrusted with interpreting our Constitution. By doing so he indicated he knew better than they and he in a way attempted to legislate via his own tactics.”
He learned well from the people who ignored what was legislated by the legislature and forced their own agenda against the expressed will of the people.
“Newt thinks he knows better than our federal Supreme Court what is legal per our Constitution.”
Well, recent news suggests he at least understands it better than the ninth circus court of appeals.
“Christians of all faiths should be standing up to these people and admonishing them for perverting their religion.”
They’re kind of busy standing up to Obama and Sebelius attempting to pervert their religion.
“Christ was accepting, not exclusionary.”
That’s right. In the Sermon on the Mount, he told the people who wanted to stone the woman for adultery that if it felt right to her it wasn’t as sin and they should throw her a party. Oh wait, he didn’t; after he forgave her for her sin, he told her to go forth and sin no more.
[I've provided links below for anything I quote are use to substantiate my claims. I wouldn't mind if you were to do the same. Like the sermon on the mount you appeared to paraphrase. If we really ant to get into the Bible, which I maintain can be interpreted to anyone's liking, we can, but It has no REAL bearing on the laws of our land.]
“…the court said. “The Constitution simply does not allow for laws of this sort.”
The Supreme court interpreted the LAW! Just because you or others don’t agree with it, you can’t accuse them of being activists. How did these 7M people lose any rights? What about the 6.4M who voted against it?
Yes 7,001,084 52.24%
No 6,401,482 47.76%
How do you account for their rights?
They still have a right to their OPINION, just that they can’t make laws based on their OPINIONS.
I’ll stick with my opinion that Vander Plaats and those like minded (Santorum) are focused on what they perceive as perversion and others see as love. They are so concerned with sex and not love or respect or any other aspect of a mutually beneficial relationship. They can’t get past the sex which makes me wonder who really is the pervert? There is more than one definition for the word:
per·vert
[v. per-vurt; n. pur-vert] Show IPA
verb (used with object)
1.to affect with perversion.
2.to lead astray morally.
3.to turn away from the right course.
4.to lead into mental error or false judgment.
5.to turn to an improper use; misapply.
Your sense of the word allows you to apply #2 to everything. Of course, morals are individual beliefs, not law. Mine leans towards #3-#5.
Just how does one exactly define morals?
Do you really have any idea how many people married for 30, 40, 60 years should never have stayed together but did out of some sense of responsibility to others, including their church? They didn’t stay together because they loved each other in some idyllic way, they stayed together because of some false sense of obligation. Social pressures mostly imposed by religion. What about divorce? What about multiple marriages? You are inferring that Gingrich, who has (at least) two affairs and two divorces has a better understanding of the law because he has greater morals than the judges. I would like some proof of your claim that the judges were forcing their own agenda on anyone. You’re talking out of both sides of your mouth when you say the legislature can better interpret the law but anything the department of justice interprets is illegal. If we are to be a country of law, we cannot legislate based on religious principles. While you’re free to practice your religion, you’re not free to impose it on others. That’s a fairly simple concept. MY religion says gay marriage is OK. YOUR religion says it’s not. How does either determine the actual LAW of the land? They don’t. As for your claim that Obama and Sebelius are attempting to pervert someones’ religion? I’ll use Catholics for your example since that seems to be what’s in the news. How can these two people be accused of perverting the Catholic faith if 98% of the Catholic women are doing it already? One could say that they are, in a sense, voting to pervert their own religion. Look to page 4 on this site: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/Religion-and-Contraceptive-Use.pdf
Or how about his one where 58% of Catholics agree with Obama?: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/02/07/420436/poll-majority-of-catholics-support-requiring-health-plans-to-provide-contraception/
I can’t make a definitive claim to this, but I can propose that what you do in your own bedroom would be considered perverted by a great number of people in this world. – Your opinion vs. theirs. Which should be law? Shall we all vote on it?
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/court-rules-proposition-8-california-voter-approved-ban-same-sex-marriages-unconstitutional-article-1.1018583
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8
“The people were told to drop dead, that their opinions don’t matter; ‘you don’t get to vote on defining society’s institutions, we do’. But I guess the results of elections only matter to you when you agree with them.”
The only folks who need to “drop dead,” Jim, are the folks who refuse to acknowledge that equal rights, as defined under the Fourteenth Amendment, apply to gays and lesbians, too. Majorites can be, and quite frequently are wrong, in refusing to extend rights to minorities.
The only “freedom” you’re defending here, Jim, is the “freedom” to let some people not only imprison their won minds with bigotry, but to restrict the freedoms of others as well.
Jim, you wouldn’t recognize real freedom if it bit you on your backside…
“The only folks who need to “drop dead,” Jim, are the folks who refuse to acknowledge that equal rights, as defined under the Fourteenth Amendment, apply to gays and lesbians, too.”
Too bad marriage isn’t a right or you would have a point. Alas, you do not.
Marriage is a right, Jim, and the only reason you would deny it is to invalidate EVERY marriage out there to spite same-sex couples.
Scorched-earth social policy is a terrible idea. Using your restrictive reading, I could argue we have no “right to privacy” because those specific words do not appear in the constitution.
Here is one part of the email I got from the FAMiLY LEADER about the Iowa Governors Conference.
“The FAMiLY LEADER is particularly distrubed by several factors related to the conference:
1) Exhibitors at the Governor’s Conference are allowed to distribute condoms and/or safe s*x kits to conference attendees, half of whom are students.”
They cant even be grown up enough to spell sex. CLOWNS!!!!!!!!!!
What groups like the Family Leader fear so much about these kinds of events is the normalization of same sex relationships.
Their very existance of these groups depends upon the demonization of the gay man or woman as being morally corrupt and unnatural. The idea that same sex relationships go against God’s, and nature’s laws, is their only justification they have for opposing them.
They cannot point to any harm being done to the rest of society by the marriage of two people of the same sex. Promoting the idea that gays and lesbians should be treated with respect, rather than ridicule, as equals, rather than inferior, as moral, rather than degenerate, is a direct threat to their core beliefs.
I agree with you when you said that Vander Plaats makes you yawn, but this is like writing an article on yawning. It makes me yawn.
“I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.” — Rev. Billy Graham, Parade, 1981
Rights aren’t supposed to be up for a vote, and the sooner this issue gets to the Supreme Court the better. It doesn’t matter what the “majority” often more appropriately named “mob “would like. We are a democratic republic, not a pure democracy. The “ban SSM” crowd would do well to remember that every lynch mob that ever existed was 100% democratic and they may be on the other side of the rope at some future point in time.
Shortly after the Supreme Court struck down bans against interracial marriage in 1967, polls found that 74% of the public still disapproved of interracial marriage. The Constitution isn’t interested in polls, and we should all be thankful that it is not.
What would be really great is if the Vanderplatts crowd would spend nearly the energy and passion pursuing truly conservative actions like shrinking government spending, defense included, and calling for a less intrusive federal presence in our lives by getting rid of the Patriot Act and start standing for individual liberty. What many of these so-called conservatives seem to want is what they accuse the Left of clamoring for: a government club to enforce a narrow and in this case, hateful, agenda.
Thanks, Jennifer. For those of us with gay family members and friends, it’s nice to know there is a large group of the population that gets it. It’s not a choice. Keep at it!
Indeed a lot of us do get it, Steve.
Keep up the good work!
I can’t help it. I have to post this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFkeKKszXTw
Priceless, Kurt!
If it’s in the Bible it must be true.
Is Vander Plaats a closet gay?