The closer our nation comes to returning to its original representative roots, the louder -- and often stupider -- the "moran" minority objects.
As an example, there are good indications that the Supreme Court will render a decision -- or two -- in favor of marriage equality, ending one of the most egregious forms of legal discrimination in history.
Enter the Neocons and the Rapture-Righties with Bibles in one hand and barely-concealed white sheets in the other, frantically flailing their arms and rending their garments with the dire and desperate prediction that if same-sex couples be allowed to enter into a legal agreement known as marriage, all Christians would be forced underground! Worse, some claim that gays "hate God" and if the Supremes overturn DOMA, all marriages will become illegitimate!
As BuzzFlash reports:
"The Religious Right group Government Is Not God PAC recently warned that if the Supreme Court strikes down Proposition 8 and DOMA then 'religious freedom, freedom of speech and the First Amendment will die': 'If homosexuals win, the Bill of Rights dies and religious liberty/free speech will die with it,' GING PAC maintained. 'We either fight this evil or see our children and grandchildren brainwashed and/or coerced into accepting homosexuality as the new normal in our society.'"
Egad, Henny-Penny, the sky is falling! And it's raining wet teabags!
Naturally, Fox News is heading the battle cry against civil rights and in favor of discrimination. ... Two Fox News contributors, independently and in other outlets, made dire predictions along these lines. Todd Starnes, speaking on American Family Radio, argued that "persecution [of Christians] like we have never seen it" had "already started" as a consequence of the marriage equality movement :
"STARNES: You know, it's as if we're second-class citizens now because we support the traditional, Biblical definition of marriage, or perhaps we are pro-life, and that means we're somehow second-class citizens who don't deserve to be in the public marketplace of ideas.
"RIOS (HOST): Absolutely. In fact, it'll be worse than that. You know there's going to be punishment. There will be tremendous punishment. If gay marriage is embraced by the country, if the Supreme Court goes south this week in its hearings, we are in for -- of course, we're not going to hear about it until June -- but we are in for persecution like we have never seen it.
"STARNES: Well, it's already started."
Such a Brain-trust Murdoch has accumulated at Fox "news." To borrow from that kid in "The Sixth Sense": I see dumb people ... they're everywhere ... they walk around like everyone else ... they don't even know they're dumb.
A similar clump of knuckle-draggers can be found clamoring around the recently renewed effort to keep military-style assault rifles out of the hands of madmen who would use them to massacre school children and their teachers. These Teabaggers of the gun-happy variety would have you believe that AK-47's are absolutely essential to protect housewives from the would-be house burglar or to, say, take out a deer ... or a forest full of deer, perhaps, without the pesky need to reload. You never know, the deer may start shooting back.
If you're more concerned about having to wait 24 hours to purchase an assault rifle than you are about the safety of our children in school ... you might be a Teabagger.
It's almost time for the NRA's annual convention, meaning for a few days, at least, the streets of America will be safer and the collective IQ of Americans outside the convention hall will rise measurably. In case you've forgotten, one of the highlights of last year's love fest of all things deadly came on the ride over to the convention hall, as Alternet reported last April:
"There were eight of us on our way to the National Rifle Association's annual convention downtown, rolling past a domino-row of highway billboards advertising the event's 'Acres of Guns and Gear.' The banter suggested the minibus crew was microcosmic of the NRA's claimed four million members, more than 70,000 of whom made the election-year pilgrimage. There was Stephen Burke, an Endowment Life Member of the NRA and an attorney from Springfield, Massachusetts, Burke specializes in getting guns into the hands of ex-cons whose licenses have been revoked or downgraded for criminal activity. Burke is a loud and boastful retired lance corporal who displays a photo of himself with NRA Executive Vice President & CEO Wayne LaPierre on his professional website.
"When a conversation about former New York Governor George Pataki's pro-gun record entered a lull, he asked the group what sounded like an American history riddle or piece of trivia: 'What do Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama have in common?'
