Love, Joy, Feminism
Have a look at this, from RightWingWatch:
Bryan Fischer used his American Family Radio program on Friday to reissue his demand that the rainbow flag be removed from public places on the grounds that it is offensive and divisive.
Reacting to reports that some schools in North Carolina have begun implementing dress codes that include bans on representations of the Confederate flag, Fischer said the same policy should apply to rainbow flags.
“If we are going to ban the Confederate flag because it is divisive, how about we ban the LGBT flag at school?” he said. “If we are going to ban the Confederate flag at school because it creates division, because it arouses division, because it is offensive to people, because it so violates their most deeply held values about human sexuality, I propose that everywhere—everywhere—where the Confederate flag is banned, that we propose that along with it, at the same time, that the LGBT rainbow flag be banned at exactly the same time for exactly the same reasons.”
“It is offensive, it is contrary to our most deeply held values, it divides people, it does not bring them together,” Fischer asserted. “It’s time to have the LGBT flag banned right alongside the Confederate flag. If we’re going to ban one, I submit we need to ban the other.”
It appears that Fischer was responding to a new dress code in Durham, North Carolina, which bars students from wearing clothing that displays swasticas, Confederate flags, or KKK symbols. Fischer claims that Durham Public Schools (DPS) banned the Confederate flag “because it arouses division” and “is offensive to people.”
But is that accurate? In a word, no. According to the Durham Herald Sun:
DPS’ revised policy bans items “reasonably expected to intimidate other students on the basis of race (for example the Confederate battle flag, Nazi swastika, and Ku Klux Klan or KKK) religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, socioeconomic status, academic status, gender identity, physical appearance, sexual orientation, mental, physical, developmental, or sensory disability, immigration status, or any other classification that is protected by law, regulation or Board policy.”
In other words, items depicting the Confederate flag were banned because they could “reasonably be expected to intimidate other students on the basis of race.” The issue was not being “divisive” or “offensive.” The issue was intimidation. This really isn’t hard to learn, either—all you have to do is google. Heck, even Fox News is reporting accurately on this. Is there a reason Fischer felt the need to misrepresent DPS’ policy to the point of changing it completely?
Fischer says he wants some sort of equality of opportunity—that if we’re going to ban one thing for being divisive (the Confederate flag), we should ban other things that are divisive too (the gay pride flag). However, DPS’ policy never applied only to the Confederate flag (something he would know if he bothered to use google). It also bans items that can be “reasonably expected to intimidate other students” on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as religion, gender, and so forth.
The problem with Fischer’s argument, of course, is that the point of comparison was never divisiveness. The policy banned items that could be reasonably expected to intimidate other students. The entire point of the Confederate flag is intimidation. That’s why it is banned. The gay pride flag, however, has never been about intimidating straight people—or religious people.
Fischer has this exactly backwards. The white supremacist believes that black people are inferior. The fundamentalist Christian believes that gay and lesbian people live lives that are morally inferior. White supremacists demonize black people as thugs and brutes. Fundamentalist Christians smear gay and lesbian individuals as child molesters. White supremacists shun contact with black people. Fundamentalist Christians disown their gay children. You see where this is going?
Fischer argued that we should ban the gay pride flag “because it is offensive to people.” Why is it offensive? Fischer writes of a flag that “violates their most deeply held values about human sexuality”; oddly, he seems to be referring to the Confederate flag. This was a radio program; doubtless he just misspoke. Still, this does open some interesting avenues for comparison.
For many decades, white supremacists found the idea of interracial marriage utterly repugnant. Preventing miscegenation was arguably one of the primary reasons for opposing the desegregation of the public schools. “These are not bad people,” President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote to Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1954. “They just don’t want their sweet little daughters to have to sit next to some big black buck.” Because, well, who knows what might happen.
While interracial marriage has been the law of the land since 1967, a majority of white people in this country continued to oppose interracial marriage until the mid-1990s. Even today, much Nazi and KKK rhetoric focuses on protecting “racial purity”—which in practice means keeping white women from taking up with black men. Indeed, Nazi and KKK rhetoric about white womanhood and purity cannot be divorced from concern about sex—who is having it with whom, and with what consequences.
Do you see the comparison? Both white supremacists and fundamentalist Christians worry very much about who is having sex with whom. White supremacists are concerned about interracial marriage; fundamentalist Christians are concerned about same-sex marriage. But at the end of the day, the crux of the matter is this: There is a difference between having your own rights violated or curtailed, and being upset that you cannot violate or curtail another’s rights. A big freaking difference.
Durham Public Schools already has the equal opportunity policy Fischer claims to want. Students are barred from wearing any items “reasonably expected to intimidate other students” based on their sexual orientation or religion, which presumably includes being straight or fundamentalist. Being offended by someone else’s sexual orientation, however, is not on the list.
Also. Whatever happened to the Right making fun of “special snowflakes”?
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