The latest anti-gay violence is happening right under the noses of the mainstream media, and absolutely nothing is being written, much less done, about it.
Turkey, the once booming and secular metropolis of the Middle East, is now being infiltrated and overrun by Muslim “religious” fanatics, who are trying to implement the barbaric sharia law throughout the country.
The Turkish paper, Hurryist Daily News, has reported, “An Islamist group has pinned posters to walls and posts in Turkey’s capital Ankara threatening gays with death, adding to concerns over growing intolerance against homosexuals in the country,” according to Agence France-Press in Ankara.
The posters refer to the biblical character Lot, who is featured “in the Old Testament and the Quran. Many Muslims believe that the decline of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah stemmed from the sexual preferences of their inhabitants.”
In other words, in the minds of “religious” Muslims, homosexuals are the root of all evil.
Even more disturbing, the article further reports that these posters appeared “just over a week after police prevented Istanbul’s annual gay pride march – a successful tradition over the past 13 years – from going ahead, using tear gas and water cannon against activists who showed defiance.”
After years of acceptance, all of a sudden gays are not welcome in Turkey, which not so coincidentally has been infiltrated by the savage Islamic extremists known as ISIS.
While the official excuse is that “the event had not received the proper authorization … activists said the authorities had tried to justify the ban by saying such an event should not take place during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.”
Speaking of Ramadan, let’s take a look at the scorecard for today, Day 23:
First Amendment rights activist (and target du jour of anti-First Amendment Islamists), Pamela Geller noted, “The silence of LGBT leadership on gays under the sharia is deafening and monstrous. While the White House is bathed in the colors of the gay flag, gay people in the Muslim world are terrorized, brutalized and slaughtered under Islamic law. And yet so many in the gay community stand with Islamic groups like CAIR.”
And yet somehow, according to the mainstream media, Pamela Geller is the problem.
While gay rights are a given here in the United States, the LGBT community MUST take note of the fact that homosexuals living in Islamic countries live in a constant state of terror.
The Rainbow Flag will never fly in any of those countries as long as this flag is waved.
Where is the outrage?
Stephanie Kienzle
“Spreading the Wealth”
so how do I approach without sounding like I’m defending silence on this issue? Here’s something. What’s happening in Turkey is the most disturbing of all the Muslim dominant states. For the last century, Turkey has stood as a model of what an plural, Islamic majority, secular state could be and now it’s falling into the dark abyss of Islamic fundamentalism
Western support for Turkey has always been strong because it was understood to be a secular democracy and I’m appalled by what’s going on.
To put it in some context, I am equally appalled that after all the blood that was shed and all the treasure that was spent in Afghanistan, the US still tolerates an Afghani government that punishes the entirely imaginary crime of apostasy (leaving Islam) with death and in Iraq still says nothing about the open persecution of Christian minorities.
I have no illusions about Islamic governance – it’s barbaric.
But to the particular question, “Where is the LGBT leadership in the United States?” First of all, the issue has been front and center in the gay news blogs, so there’s that.
But most US LGBT groups are currently confronting the religiously based discrimination movement in the United States called the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, which are designed to grant a broad exemption to business and individuals allowing them to discriminate at will and against the established law in the US. These may not be a more existential danger globally but these are a huge threat nationally. The people sponsoring these are often the same ones who engage in blustering rhetoric about Islamic threats, support our crazy interventionism (really is siding with one dictator against another ever a good idea?) and who fail to see that their argument appears to be which religion to impose rather than freedom from religious imposition.
I don’t like Pamela Geller. I usually admire a good provocateur, particularly those in favor of free speech and who provoke religious prejudice, but I find her question here disingenuous. It’s designed to point the finger at a single group that has quite enough on its plate.
A simple Google search shows the outrage from wordlwide LGBT media so I question her motives of “just askin'”
It matters to note that LGBT rights groups, almost alone, represent a constituency that varies from the most left leaning, out there activists to the deeply closeted, antigay, right wing who are also gay. (Ken Mehlman, Larry Craig, does Senator Lindsey Anne Graham Cracker ring a bell?) Unlike other groups, there is no single ideology and most have chosen to simply address discrimination in the US and on the local level.
When a rape victim in an Islamic country can be stoned to death for “adultery”, when women in our closest ally Saudi Arabia can be arrested for driving, when girls are burned for “sorcery”, when people who leave Islam in Afghanistan are executed by the state, when gay men are hanged in Iran and prosecuted in Egypt, the US as one country should be reacting to these horrors. We don’t. We’re good at selective outrage.
I would love to see a concerted LGBT, Women’s Rights, Religious Freedom Advocates, and others band together and at least talk openly about what we support and what we condemn. But the whole game is rigged against that and this kind of singling out is one of the reasons.
Kevin, as always you brought up some excellent points, some of which I’d like to address.
I’m a bit surprised at your animosity toward Pamela Geller. She has been a ferocious defender and supporter of free speech and human rights. Her main focus, as you know, is the battle against Islamic fanaticism, especially as it is practiced against gays and women. She constantly rails against the mainstream media and politicians who are ignoring this problem. Her question to the LGBT community was not meant to point blame on just them, but to everyone who refuses to see the barbarism practiced in the name of Islam.
Likewise, my question, “Where is the outrage?”, is not directed to any one group, but to all Americans. As you pointed out, Turkey is “a model of what an plural, Islamic majority, secular state could be and now it’s falling into the dark abyss of Islamic fundamentalism.” You hit the nail on the head!
The problem with Americans is that most of us are not paying attention to what is happening across the pond. The sharia law is insinuating itself in all of Europe and the Middle East. Islamists have made it very clear that they intend to create a worldwide caliphate. Christians, Jews, atheists, gays, “heretics,” and all Westerners in fact, will not be included in their “vision.” Turkey is falling. England, France and Spain are on the brink, as are Sweden, Norway, and the rest of the civilized nations in Europe.
No one here is paying attention. The FBI director gave a chilling two hour speech before Congress two days ago, advising them that they thwarted at least 10 terrorist attacks in our country by MEMBERS OF ISIS on July 4th. (http://www.c-span.org/video/?326953-1/hearing-threats-encryption-issues)
ISIS IS HERE! They hate us. They want to kill us. Unless we do something about this evil ideology and resist, we are doomed.
About the Religious Freedom Acts, here is just something to think about. Your comment that these acts “are designed to grant a broad exemption to business and individuals allowing them to discriminate at will” is not entirely factual.
Governmental and public agencies are not allowed to discriminate on a full spectrum of particulars, including race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. We are all entitled to equal protection under the law.
By that same token, are not individuals who hold deeply religious beliefs entitled not to be discriminated against? For example, that couple who owned a small bakery were staunch Christians who believe that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. Regardless of whether or not we agree with them (which neither of us obviously does), do they not have the right to their religious beliefs? They refused to bake a cake for a gay couple’s wedding. They were fined $135,000.00 for the couple’s “trauma.”
Mind you. This is a small family owned bakery, who are now out of business and have absolutely no way to pay that money.
Was it fair for the government to tell them who they can and cannot bake a cake for? If they honest believe that homosexuality is against “God’s will,” does society have a right to force them to deny their own beliefs? Wasn’t this country founded on religious freedom, among other rights?
More importantly, did this couple REALLY cause pain and suffering to the gay couple whose cake they didn’t bake? REALLY?
Frankly, why would a gay couple want to have their wedding cake made by people who don’t “approve” of their union? The perfect “statement” the couple could have made was to boycott that bakery and take their business elsewhere.
I realize I’m playing the so-called devil’s advocate here, but if we are all entitled to equal protection, I hope that people who have religious convictions (and don’t behead people who disagree with them) are just as entitled to those same rights.
Otherwise, what’s to stop the government from forcing Jehovah’s Witnesses to take blood transfusions?
What will we be forced to comply with next? Sharia?
I’ll leave the Pamela Geller thing aside. I just don’t like her grandstanding.
On Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, though, it does matter. The Baker at first glance seems ridiculous, particularly since bitterness spoils buttercream terribly, but the bakery is a public accommodation, like a restaurant, like a hotel, like a car repair shop, like medical services.
RFRA laws do not force people acting in a religious capacity to go against their religion. They allow religion to be privileged above law though.
Some examples. A nursing home on religious grounds could refuse family visitation to a same sex spouse. It’s happened. It’s real.
A hotel could refuse accommodation based on real or even perceived orientation citing religious objections which in some places might be inconvenient and in others, rural areas for example, could be the only option.
County clerks issuing civil marriage licenses for legal marriages could for example refuse to issue such licenses because the applicants had been divorced and claim their Catholic faith prohibits them from this. Orthodox clerks could refuse to issue licenses to interfaith couples.
It’s not asking much to say if you operate in the civic sphere, you operate by those rules.
Religion enjoys extraordinary privilege in the United States. No Catholic priest is forced to officiate at a second post-divorce marriage, ever. No Orthodox rabbi is compelled to marry interfaith couples (I know there are like 3,000 versions of Orthodox but you get my point.) And apparently Jehovah’s Witnesses can refuse blood transfusions for adults but thank Jehovah not for their children.
It’s even possible under RFRA to imagine a DMV clerk refusing to issue a driver’s license to a woman because it violates (supposedly) Sharia Law.
RFRA gives broad latitude to a narrowly defined set of exemptions based on religious belief and anytime government enforces religious beliefs or religion runs a government, it’s bad for both of them. The unintended consequence could easily be the open practice of Sharia.
Look I know this is a side track your main point – “Where is the outrage?” – and I agree with you. Outrage is entirely too selective and informed by convenience. I’m not giving the LGBT groups a pass on this, just explaining the calculations as I understand them.
Man, are you two long winded. It gets hard to follow.
To me the issue is that just as Gay, etc. want their freedoms and rights, so do Christians and others who don’t believe in gay marriage or other push it down your throat issues that they are subjected to.
Using the Constitution as an example, we all have inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. we also have the right of freedom of speech and expression. Anyone who is the primary owner of a business should have the right to serve or not serve anyone they choose, whether it means at a lunch counter, making a cake or whatever else it may be. Certainly the norms of society will soon put people out of business if they choose to only serve specific people, however, that should be their decision to make. If it is abhorrent to you that a particular business won’t make a gay wedding cake, find another one that will. Just as its the business owners right to do what he wants, it too is the public’s right to choose another business.
I don’t push my heterosexual agenda on gays so quit pushing a gay agenda on me like flying a gay flag from a public building. Shouldn’t the American flag be all that is needed?
Kevin and I are both long winded because we’re both bloggers. We are opinionated, and that’s how we got here. 🙂
As you can see by my last response to Kevin, I agree with your points. I would love nothing more than for the government to stay out of my personal life and focus on things that affect the entire country. You know, silly little things like infrastructure and homeland security. If the federal government took care of what’s really important, and left individuals alone, this country would be a lot better off.
Rhetorical question for my readers: When, if ever, will we win the (1) war on poverty, (2) war on drugs, (3) war on terror?
Just asking.
Kevin, I think you inadvertently made my point about the DMV and County Clerks not being allowed to selectively approve driver’s or marriage licenses. These are both government entities, and it’s illegal for them to discriminate.
I also agree with you that if a small/private business refuses to serve someone based on their own whim, customers have the same right not to patronize that business. It’s the Darwinism (or natural selection) of capitalism. A Christian baker who sets up shop in a primarily gay community is doomed to go out of business if they refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding. Duh!
My final point about this is that, as you said, under the Constitution we have the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We also have the right to keep the government out of our personal lives. It does work both ways. If people want freedom from government interference with respect to their bodies and their bedrooms, the people who disapprove of our individual rights based on religious or moral principles also have the right to be free from government interference. Neither side has the right to inflict their own belief system on each other or anyone else.
The same way that the government shouldn’t force us to buy something we don’t want (like health insurance maybe?), they should not have the right to force us to sell something we don’t want to sell. I mean, seriously, WTF?
The founding fathers must be having a collective face palm right about now.