Actually, it DOES happen here, but the protestations of the Christian
Taliban drown it out.
The violence that is consuming France right now is not about
gay marriage, but about the Right's vengeance on a legislature that it deems
"socialist" and not acting fro the "will of the people."
The fact that it is an elected legislature doesn't seem to dawn on the Right,
but that's another story - and a barrage of statistics on its mentality.
It
was an issue that galvanized
the country's faltering right, which had been decimated by infighting and their
election loss to President Francois Hollande. France is the 14th country to legalize
gay marriage nationwide _and the most populous.
...In recent weeks, violent attacks against gay couples have
spiked and some legislators have received threats -- including Claude Bartelone,
the Assembly president, who got a gunpowder-filled envelope on Monday.
One of the biggest protests against same-sex marriage drew
together hundreds of thousands of people bused in from the French provinces --
conservative activists, schoolchildren with their parents, retirees, priests
and others. That demonstration ended in blasts of tear gas, as right-wing
rabble-rousers, some in masks and hoods, led the charge against police,
damaging cars along the Champs-Elysees avenue and making a break for the
presidential palace.
Some of the protesters even resorted to using toddlers as
human shields to ward off the
tear gas.
The vote for "legalizing marriage for everyone" capped months of
violence against gays. And the call for gays to be killed surfaced on Twitter
as a hashtag just before the vote:
Il Faut Tuer Les Homosexuels: "It Is Necessary To Kill
Homosexuals"
For weeks, the Christian Taliban - represented by our own Brian Brown of
National Organization for Marriage (NOM) - characterized the demonstrations as
"peaceful":
In France spontaneous peaceful
demonstrations by young people protesting their government's determination to
ignore the voice of the people is causing headaches across the country. For the
government, this is becoming a major headache. These young people are making
sure government officials' support for gay marriage is not forgotten. Violence
did break out but not from the pro-marriage protesters. Change is coming,
something new is stirring. The truth will win out.
The estimable
Mr. Brown's breaking of the Seventh Commandment was not lost on a number of
people, especially those who were bashed.
The Right Mix
Political analysts have weighed in on the violence, positing that conservatives
would not have protested so vehemently if socialist President Francois Hollande
had not gotten such abysmal approval ratings in terms of the economy. The
mixture of Christian Right, disenfranchised conservatives and unemployment has
been too heady for the country of 40 million, even though over 65% of the
populace approve of gay marriage. It was felt that the legislation was
railroaded through by an administration with too much power.
Sound familiar?
With a Christian Taliban coalescing with the NRA, rebuking Republicans who
support same-sex marriage, portraying the Obama administration as a road to
tyranny and Christian persecution, the recent calls for "revolution"
from the Right do not seem as marginal as they once were. Of course, just as
France's Right has decried the violence, our own Right has denounced violence
against homosexuals - in a roundabout way: while saying that such violence is
appalling, Christian Right luminaries such as Tony Perkins of the Family
Research Council consistently chimes in with a strident "we aren't
responsible."
Accountability
The support given to France's Right by America's own Right-wing religious may
never be fully documented, (NOM gave us only a small taste) but for a group
that is not ashamed to export hate, it is easy to imagine just how involved it
was. In any case, accountability has never been its strong point.
And lack of accountability, as we all know, can lead to other things.
