Atlas Shrugged and Homos are Destroying America

Yep, I know, that's a pretty hilarious combination of threats to the American way of life. But, if you take professional hysteric, former Nixon operative, full-time fundamentalist loon Chuck Colson, as a fount of wisdom, then you have to be worried. I just can't figure out who he hates more: Objectivists or gays. And you gay Objectivists had better steer clear of old upChuck.

Unfortunately blogger is not sophisticated enough to share with you the actual recording of Olson breathlessly warming Americans and the deadly and dangerous group known as "daGays." But deGays are destroying the religious freedom to impose godly beliefs on others. Colson does so by embellishing the facts. Hey, if you can make up a virgin birth and dead people resurrecting then embellishing a few facts is nothing.

Colson's first example, of THE THREAT, regards King & Spalding, a law firm hired by Republicans to try and defend the Defense of Marriage Act against any legal challenges. A conservative lawyer at the firm signed a deal to defend the case but a few days later the firm said it was not going ahead with the case. Right-wing pundits salivated, foamed and started screaming about deGays and their AGENDA. Colson claimed the firm had acted unethically.

Pity the facts were something different. The lawyer, Paul Clement, had said he would take the case. But there is a committee at the firm which has to approve very contract BEFORE the case is taken on board. Clement neglected to show anyone the contract until four days after he announced they had taken the case. When the committee read the contract the Republicans insisted they sign, they balked. Among the terms was a gag order on every employee of the firm, which is hundreds of people in 12 cities, forbidding any of them to speak in favor of marriage equality, even if they had nothing to do with the case. The contract, by the way, would be illegal in numerous states. Instead of noting the illegal and ethically dubious nature of the contract, and that it had never been vetted according to firm protocol, the Colsons of the world launched into another plot by deGays.

Next Colson misstates the facts about an immigration case. According to Colson "The Obama administration stopped the deportation order for a gay immigrant because the Justice Department feels that the man could be considered a spouse of another man under U.S. immigration laws." This is simply not the case. There are numerous cases where spouse of gay Americans are being deported, something that would not happen to people legally married in heterosexual relationships. These couples are legally married but the Republicans wish to use a federal definition and ignore the wishes of the states in this matter. They call that protecting the states' rights to define marriage.

In fact, each case is still proceeding. And the Obama administration deserves no credit for doing the right thing here. I wish they had. Instead they made it clear that will continue the deportations of legally-married spouses in gay relationships. This one case was delayed because the Justice Department said that other factors, unrelated to the status of marriage, were not considered but should have been. They issued a letter at the time stating this had nothing to do with recognizing gay marriages. Maybe if Olson read something other than the Old Testament he would have been familiar with the facts.

Colson says gays, protesting about anti-gay policies, "are coercing corporations, and no law firms." Odd. Speech, even boycotts, are not coercion. But legal bans using the force of government ARE coercion. Theopublicans like Colson want to use government force and violence and they call that "law" while anyone criticizing such use of state power is charged with using "coercion." Republicans have an odd definition of coercion.

If you think deGays are dangerous, and what right-thinking, born-again, Bible-believing, revivalist doesnt, then what do you make of those evil, dangerous people who read Atlas Shrugged? Colson issued a fatwa on Atlas Shrugged that he called a "two-minute warning." But Rand is so dangerous that it actually took 3 1/2 minutes to denounce this spawn of Satan.

This time I can share the hysterical warnings about Ayn Rand.

I guess Objectivists are at least one level more dangerous than deGays because Olson warns about the Atlas Shrugged movie twice over. "Not only should you stay away from the film, you ought to stay away from anybody who wants to see the film." Fundamentalists have previously warned Christians to never be friendly with a gay person, because they discovered that people who gay people don't tend to hate them the way Jesus wants. But I've never heard them warning people to stay away from people who know gay people. In fundamentalist terms this is known as "secondary separation."

Fundamentalists are supposed to have little to nothing to do with non-fundamentalists. But some insist that even if the people you associate with are born-again crazies you still have to shun them if they don't separate from "worldly" people and other such sinners. So, you separate from the sinners and from the people who associate with them.

Mr. Colson is your typical fundamentalist, finding evil enemies under every bed and behind every bush. Sad stuff, really.