My, my. What is it with certain members of the Harris County Republican Party? Methinks that it might have something to do with this:
Psychoanalysts use the concept of latent homosexuality to explain the emotional malaise and irrational attitudes of some individuals who feel guilty about their erotic interests and who struggle to deny and repress homosexual impulses.
I mean, seriously, there is something not right with a few people within the HCRP leadership. Let’s take a look at the person handpicked to be Chairman Jared Woodfill’s personal gatekeeper on the Vacancy Committee, Terry Lowry. How do I know that he was handpicked to be Jared’s personal gatekeeper? Because Jared said so on one of Mr. Lowry’s pre-taped radio segments this week:
Jared Woodfill and Terry Lowry
There you go. Chairman Woodfill stated that he wants Lowry to do exactly what he did to Chris Busby, as I detailed here.
You can listen to the entire Lowry/Woodfill interview here. I encourage you to do just that to get a good glimpse of why the HCRP is shrinking daily. They also do a pretty good job of describing how the Republicans took over the state by attracting socially conservative Democrats to take over the Republican party. The problem is that today’s demographics are completely different than they were in the late 80’s/early 90’s. Those former Democrats that vote solely on social issues are, well, getting a bit older and there just aren’t as many of them as there used to be. The very end of that interview is just sickening for those of us that believe in the New Testament. Jesus came to heal and forgive, not to bash and ostracize.
This has sort of been homosexual week on the “What’s Up Radio Program“. Tuesday’s show was titled “Sexual Predators are Lurking Everywhere. No Child or Teen is Immune” and featured Lowry talking to 80 year old Judith Reisman (www.DrJudithReisman.org), who fancies herself as an expert on weird sex, whatever that is. This one was really bizarre – Lowry put himself up on the cross because, you know, the work of Jesus wasn’t enough. Lowry is persecuted, you know, because he is going to “tell the truth” about them there homosexuals. See definition above. Wednesday’s program was titled “Antisocial and Ignorant Behavior” and featured two segments with Houston Pastors Council founder Dave Welch and one with the aforementioned Jared Woodfill on “Gay Rights and the GOP”.
Some of the stuff was, as I said, bizarre. Once again he referred to the “National Gay Agenda” and said that he asked Busby if it was okay for him (Lowry) to have sex with a 10 year old girl and for him (Busby) to have sex with a 10 year old boy. Lowry claimed that Busby answered that question with “sex ed should be taught at home”. Lowry’s claim is refuted by eight people that were in the room plus Busby himself. Busby answered “of course not”, as anyone in their right mind would. But Lowry and “Dr” Reisman had a field day talking about it, with “Dr” Reisman claiming that obviously Busby’s answer was yes because he refused to answer. Here is that specific segment:
Terry Lowry sex with 10 year old question
How about that laugh at the end? Hillary-esque much? You can listen to the entire interview here. Again, I encourage you to do so. You will immediately see why the HCRP is shrinking. And you’ll also get a glimpse of some bat-guano-craziness that is hurting the Republican brand as a whole.
One of the “points” that “Dr” Reisman made was that 64{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of forcible sodomy victims are under the age of 12 and that this is what is going to happen in the Boy Scouts now that they’ve allowed scouts to be openly gay. Yeah, she said that. Her statistic comes from a 2000 report US Dept of Justice’s Bureau of Statistics. What she FAILED to mention from the same report, purposefully I’m certain, is that 5 of 6 sexual assaults of young juveniles occurred in a residence and that strangers were the offenders in less than 3{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of those under 6 and less than 5{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of those between 6 and 11. Put your thinking caps on for a minute and tell me who is committing these crimes. Hint: it ain’t some homosexual passing by that gets an “urge”. Good grief, this woman has a doctorate? Pity the university that awarded it to her.
On top of these problems, Woodfill is trying to implement a strategy of GOTV of evangelical Christians versus expanding the party. He truly believes that had evangelical Christians just got up out of their pews and voted, Mitt Romney would be president now. You can hear him say that in the above linked interview or you can read mi amiga Karen Townsend’s excellent review of a Woodfill presentation given to the Greater Houston Pachyderm Club Tuesday: HCRP Chairman Woodfill Speaks to Greater Houston Pachyderm Club. Delusional.
The Chris Busby affair has nothing whatsoever to do with changing the Republican Party’s platform and eliminating social issues. The idea that allowing one person to work organizing a precinct will somehow turn the executive committee meetings into wild homosexual orgies is ridiculous. Working with people who agree with 80-90{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of the platform is the point. Growing the party by reaching out to all people is the point. Expanding liberty and freedom is the point.
Make no mistake – Chris Busby will be a precinct chair when he is elected in the next primary. I know that makes a few “leaders” quake in their boots but that is going to happen. And because of this episode, I guarantee you that more people like Chris, you know, ho-mo-sex-u-als, are going to file, run, and win. And that’s a good thing for the party. If it takes three or four cycles to get the HCRP turned around and back to winning elections in Harris County during presidential years, so be it. For a good read, check out Colin Strother’s Texas Republicans Enter The First Stage Of Grief: Denial.
And if you really, really, want to scare a few more members of the “Christian” leadership of the HCRP, have them read this: Scientists fear female libido booster too effective.
While I agree that the Woodfil/Lowry cabal needs to be purged from the party, pulling the “thou doth protest too much/latent homosexuality” card is as old and tired as the race card. If you want to base your argument on psychobabble and the pseudo-science of psychiatry that’s fine. It doesn’t convince me.
“The very end of that interview is just sickening for those of us that believe in the New Testament. Jesus came to heal and forgive, not to bash and ostracize.”
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Jesus also said “Go, and sin no more.” Are you saying that your interpretation of the New Testament is that homosexuality is not a sin? I’m really not trying to start an argument here, I’m just trying to understand where you’re coming from.
Mark, you raise a couple of very important points in your last comment–first as to sin itself, and second as to how we should treat the sinner in the realm of a secular political party.
I’ll have to admit that I am not a theologian and have never pretended to be. But there have been Christian scholars and historians over the centuries who have noted that the list of sins that included homosexuality were actually a list of hedonic practices, and that hedonism was condemned by many cultures and found to be perverse at the time Christ lived and taught. If the practice of homosexuality as described in the Bible was a sin because it was a manifestation of hedonism, then at least we Christians should pause and reflect whether homosexuality can be separated from hedonism, and if it can, whether non-hedonic homosexuality is actually a sin?
Regardless of that esoteric theological debate, if it is a sin no matter what the context, my recollection is that it is not the mortal sin. If I’m right, then we are stuck with the age-old question “aren’t we all fallen sinners?” If we are, then who among us is anointed to determine which sinners can participate in the Republican Party and which ones are forbidden? How do those anointed make that determination? Is this even an appropriate endeavor–is it appropriate to use sin as the gatekeeper for denying access to participation in one of the two main political parties in our democracy, or is this one of those matters that we work out in Caesar’s realm under Caesar’s rules?
Here’s where this old Christian heretic comes down: I am called during the short time I am given on this Earth to love and care for my fellow fallen, sinning neighbors, and to do the best I can to make this place as good a place as an imperfect, fallen world can be; and I have been blessed by birth to have the opportunity to live and participate in a democratic Republic with my fallen, sinning neighbors. To make this life work, and to pass this country on to my children, I will work in Caesar’s realm with my fallen, sinning neighbors who agree with me as to how this country’s governments should operate. If that means that I am to work with gays and lesbians, so be it–I just hope that my gay and lesbian neighbors who agree with me on most political issues also will look past my sins to work with me.
Ed, thank you for your reasoned response. Too often the immediate reaction one gets on this subject is “homophobe!”
I’m certainly no biblical scholar, and readily admit that my perspective comes from the Catholic viewpoint (and at this point the same people spewing out “homophobe” usually start bringing up abuse by priests, as if that somehow negates their sins). In my studies, first, homosexuality in and of itself is not a sin. Homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and are grave sins because they are contrary to natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life (ccc 2357). So with that background it should be clear that, in my Church, homosexual acts are a sin. I’m not going to get into whether this particular sin should be separated out from other sins.
Indeed we are all sinners. I’ve said the same thing here before. If your neighbor is a philanderer, would you consider it a sin for you to enable his encounters with his girlfriend by providing them with a some place to meet in secret? I think you would. As I said the other day, if the voters want to elect Mr. Busby as precinct judge, no one should stop them. I wouldn’t vote for him for the reasons I listed above, just like I wouldn’t help my neighbor commit adultery.
I have worked with homosexuals in many capacities throughout my adult life. They’ve been bosses, equals, and subordinates. And, as my Church teaches, I accepted them with “respect, compassion, and sensitivity” and avoided “unjust discrimination” (ccc 2358). I have never denied anyone opportunities for advancement simply because they were homosexual. It didn’t have any bearing on the work they performed. But when it comes down to the politics of making law contrary to my beliefs I am not called to accept their sin as no longer being sin.
What does Terry Lowry have on Jared Woodfill? I ask this because of the well documented past of Lowryl.
The problem her is many fold. The history of the scriptures shows us that in a Civilizational context, that those people who have been favored by God ( and America is to me an obvious example) will be blessed as a people when they live by God’s laws. When that civilization descends into the cafeteria plan of wickedness, that the blessed land will be cursed. I realize that this sounds odd to most people, but I believe that there are many signs of such a situation presenting itself. One in particular, that of other peoples beginning to harass, destroy and generally ‘punish’ us for the their perceived grudges ( that would be their reason for acting) being allowed by the Almighty to bring us to remembrance of our duty to God.
The bit about loving the sinner is, however, our duty and as the father of a gay woman, I have to separate the sin and the tendencies) and pray for the County but work and interact and love the sinners as best I can. As for politics it is a hard road. The Tidal Wave of ‘Gay Rights’ is unfortunately hitting the afterburners in the super-sonic flight into the mainstream.
On May 18, Dr. Robert P George delivered the commencement address at University of St. Thomas. This was the second UST graduation I had attended, the first being my daughters way back in 2004. I had heard of Dr. George and decided to research his ideas on Natural Law after hearing him speak:
At the center of the event was Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence and a Roman Catholic who is this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker. Dressed in his usual uniform of three-piece suit, New College, Oxford cuff links and rimless glasses, George convened the meeting with a note of thanks and a reminder of its purpose. Alarmed at the liberal takeover of Washington and an apparent leadership vacuum among the Christian right, the group had come together to warn the country’s secular powers that the culture wars had not ended. As a starting point, George had drafted a 4,700-word manifesto that promised resistance to the point of civil disobedience against any legislation that might implicate their churches or charities in abortion, embryo-destructive research or same-sex marriage.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/magazine/20george-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine
also:
He has parlayed a 13th-century Catholic philosophy into real political influence. Glenn Beck, the Fox News talker and a big George fan, likes to introduce him as “one of the biggest brains in America,” or, on one broadcast, “Superman of the Earth.” Karl Rove told me he considers George a rising star on the right and a leading voice in persuading President George W. Bush to restrict embryonic stem-cell research. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told me he numbers George among the most-talked-about thinkers in conservative legal circles. And Newt Gingrich called him “an important and growing influence” on the conservative movement, especially on matters like abortion and marriage.
and this:
In the American culture wars, George wants to redraw the lines. It is the liberals, he argues, who are slaves to a faith-based “secularist orthodoxy” of “feminism, multiculturalism, gay liberationism and lifestyle liberalism.” Conservatives, in contrast, speak from the high ground of nonsectarian public reason. George is the leading voice for a group of Catholic scholars known as the new natural lawyers. He argues for the enforcement of a moral code as strictly traditional as that of a religious fundamentalist. What makes his natural law “new” is that it disavows dependence on divine revelation or biblical Scripture — or even history and anthropology. Instead, George rests his ethics on a foundation of “practical reason”: “invoking no authority beyond the authority of reason itself,” as he put it in one essay.
George’s admirers say he is revitalizing a strain of Catholic natural-law thinking that goes back to St. Thomas Aquinas. His scholarship has earned him accolades from religious and secular institutions alike. In one notable week two years ago, he received invitations to deliver prestigious lectures at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Harvard Law School. His critics, including many of his fellow Catholic scholars, argue that he is turning the church into a tool of Republican Party. They say he is too focused on the mechanics of sex and morality, neglecting the other sides of the Christian message: the corruption of human reason through original sin, the need for forgiveness and charity and the chance for redemption. Citing George’s comparison of Catholic scholars who support abortion rights to defenders of chattel slavery, Cathleen Kaveny of the Notre Dame Law School, another scholar of law and theology in the Thomistic tradition, has called George and his allies “Rambo Catholics” and “ecclesiastical bullies.”
I’ve said for years that if the Repubs would allow for gay marriage, step down from their sanctimonious abortion platform and concentrate more on the fiscal side, they would never lose another election. But who am I to argue against Dr. Robert P George?
“…they would never lose another election.”
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For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?
I disagree with gay marriage — but if I have the choice between siding with those who support it and those who act with hearts filled with hate on the matter, I will side with supporters every time. And I will agree with you, Mark — the "latent homo" stuff is just bad form.
I think it is time for churches to get out of the marriage business. People should go get a civil marriage license signed by a judge and then have a Matrimony Ceremony – more commonly called a wedding. Since it no longer has anything to do with the "law" then churches can choose whom they wish to give matrimony ceremonies to or not.
That is the system found in much of Europe.
While the Texas GOP engages in this nonsense, the state will go blue, broke and down the drain, like the rest of them. With respect, why can't the GOP just take the position that marriage should be a religious, not state, matter and leave it at that? PLEASE keep your debates about sin in church, your moral/ethical discussions and education at home, and focusing on shrinking government. Good grief. The Republic is at stake, people. (Both of them.)
Robert
“I think it is time for churches to get out of the marriage business.”
Au contraire, mon frère. It’s time for the state to get out of the marriage business.
Elizabeth
“PLEASE keep your debates about sin in church, your moral/ethical discussions and education at home”
Since our entire Republic is built on the morality and ethics of our founding fathers that will be somewhat hard to do.
Some time ago, after a lengthy discussion on the matter I asked a Morman friend of mine what gave him the right to empower his government to purposefully and intentionally discriminate against gay people. His answer: “God did.”
I submit that his answer is a dangerous one. Because what naturally follows is another question: “Which god gives you such power over your fellow human beings? Which “god” is the correct god? Which (or whose) interpretation of which version of holy scripture is correct enough that it should be codified into laws affecting everyone? Can you prove that your “god” is the correct god in a court of law, where “truth matters?” Would you really want to try?
I’m not a religious person. But I do respect liberty, especially religious liberty. I suggest that the greatest degree of religious freedom for the greatest number of people is attained when we quite purposefully separate “your god” from everyone’s government, as the founders of our exceptional experiment in self government intended.
For over four decades, social conservatives have used a politically insignificant group of human beings to create a scary monster hiding under everyone’s beds. Lies, awful lies, about these people have been told, and they were told by politically ambitious people, often for political gain. This distasteful, dishonest strategy persists because of its history of success. But that success is now rapidly becoming history as well.
Jerry Fallwell is dead, folks. And so is this issue.
Conservatives need to ask themselves one simple question. Is this issue really one worth fighting and risking elections over? Are we willing to lose the House and let Harris county go completely blue because two guys can now file a joint tax return?
If you think that is more or as important to stop as our runaway deficit spending or our out of control welfare state then your mind is made up. But if you think for a second that our economic future is a bigger deal then two men sharing medical benefits then think long and hard about what this argument is doing to the conservative movement.