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I am sure you are!

Being racist is not just a white problem my dear .

Well gee... I´m sorry to disappoint you... but I am after all... only human.

I meant it, if you go away I would have to put dective L on your ass and bring you back screaming and yelling

I won´t go away... but will probably take a few days off to gain a bit of perspective and cool my jets.

You seem to misunderstand me......you havent dissapointed me

youve dissaponted yourself !!! ............ I feel no warmth or cold towards you but an intolorance that feels i should be a reflection of you to yourself.....................Thats probally too hard for you to understand...............

if you throw stones and you live in a glass house.....im going to throw "your" stones back and deliver hurtfull, mindless rhetoric back to you...............

And people ask why it is so hard to find a date

Ummmm that was sarcasm... guess I should have used the to make that clear.

Hey! were just one big feckinghappy family here @CS

When someone pi$$e$ me off I stay, only the MODS are my GODS on here, all hail the MODS GODS

We do get to know one another, thats for sure

...............Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawnnnnnnnnnnnnn





Your sooooo Interesting

fortunately and unfortunately I need 2

Well like I said....Free speech does not stop just because some people don't like what is being said....it works both ways...not just one way...and nobody ever said anyone had to agree with it.....If it was illegal you can sure bet people were charged with hate crimes...but some countries don't even have those laws....


I would be most scared of this...It seems like these people have a far more organized plot going on...right in the middle of America...which basicly brainwashes their participants into believing only their views are valid....not to mention they have quite the network...and it involves the average American citizen....


WHAT THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT WANTS....

Christian fundamentalists are backed by a whole range of institutions and organizations, from private schools and home schooling networks to Bible Institutes, colleges, radio and TV programs, publishing houses and legal centers dedicated to advancing a conservative agenda. (Note: Home schooling is not just a project of the fundamentalists, but they have built a network of fundamentalist educational materials that reinforce their specific views.) The Christian Right demands society accept and conform to its notion of what it means to be a good family and a good citizen in God’s kingdom. It is a social, political and religious movement that wants the government to regulate and maintain traditional hierarchical relations between men and women and between parents and children. It sees the role of the state as enforcer of “moral” (read: sexual) behavior. That’s why the right of homosexuals to marry represents to them the beginning of the end of society. They ask, “what next? Polygamy? Bestiality?”

Yet, from this perspective, poverty is seen not as a moral issue but as the result of individual bad luck or bad behavior. Because the Christian Right views hierarchy as natural and positive, it is not bothered by inequalities of wealth and power. The Bush administration has attempted to alter domestic government programs that aid poor or low-wage working families by funding “faith-based” solutions to various social problems. This has enabled the administration to privatize services, reward its conservative religious base, reach out to other church-based programs and hook them into the network as well as fund particular right-wing approaches to social issues. Sexual education programs advocate abstinence. After-school reading and math programs teach specific skills that reflect the kinds of tests the “No Child Left Behind” legislation mandates. And the “faith-based” programs successfully compete with the community-service programs that already have a proven track record in terms of social service provision.

(Cont'd)....

According to Sara Diamond, who has followed the evangelical Right for years, the Christian Right can be considered partly oppositional and partly system-supportive. It is oppositional to mass culture, which explains why the United States has such sharp culture wars. But it glorifies America’s past and more or less supports its present economic system. However, even though it “accepts” that America and its social institutions are good, this provincial nationalism does not coincide with Corporate America’s globalization project -even if Christian fundamentalist support to Israel reinforces US policy in the Middle East. Thus there is an inherent contradiction in its alliance with the Republican Party.

According to the Christian Right, one of the big problems in society today is a lack of religion. In 1980 Tim LaHaye, a founder of the Moral Majority, published The Battle for the Mind. Widely circulated, this book explains that there is a vast conspiracy involving Hollywood movie producers, Unitarian churches, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). From a Christian right perspective, these opinion-shapers are out to harm Bible believers because they deny God’s sovereignty. That is, moral conditions become worse because of people’s attempts to solve their problems independently of God. Ultimately, it is the “secular humanists” who are causing the problem.

To fix the problems of society, then, requires the “moral majority” getting involved in the electoral process and taking charge, either as candidates or as workers assisting the right kind of candidate. The Christian Right first developed several single-issue campaigns against the Equal Rights Amendment and against the liberalization of abortion. It also developed a network of organizations and Christian schools out of opposition to desegregation orders.

The Christian Right developed a “hit list” of congressmen who it felt were particularly anti-Christian, anti-family and against ‘traditional values’. By 1982, as a result of the combined efforts of the New Right and the Christian Right, two million new voters went to the polls. Not only was Ronald Reagan elected president, with white fundamentalists accounting for two-thirds of his lead, but 23 out of 27 oppositional congressmen targeted by the fundamentalists lost.

However, the Christian Right didn’t manage to get much from the Reagan and Bush I tenure. Instead they were drawn into supporting right-wing military regimes in Central America. Not only did the Christian Right identify with these regimes because they carried out their repression under an anti-communist banner, but right-wing evangelicals such as Guatemala’s Rios Montt led the military command. The Christian Right mobilized their constituency through publications and media programming, justifying death squads in Guatemala and El Salvador and terrorist contras in opposition to the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. They were so eager to collaborate with the White House in this anti-communist crusade that the battle for family values was relegated to state and local fights.

However the local skirmishes had important national repercussions. These included defeat of the federal Equal Rights Amendment, where only 35 out of the necessary 38 states ratified the amendment before the deadline, as well as hundreds of legislative restrictions on abortion.

(Cont'd)....

b]ANTI-ABORTION ACTIVISM

During the 1980s grassroots anti-abortionists developed several dozen clinics that advertised themselves as abortion referral services and offered free pregnancy tests. While women waited for their results, they were forced to watch a presentation about the alleged dangers of abortion. Several women filed lawsuits and the clinics were forced to cease their false advertising. Today, a network of about 3,000 “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” advertising as abortion alternatives rely on their powers of persuasion and narrowly circumscribed ‘help’ which includes: offering free pregnancy tests, legal and medical advice, adoption information, and infant and maternity clothes. At least a third are operated by two umbrella organizations, one Catholic and one Protestant.

But if one section of the anti-abortion movement was willing to put energy into manipulating pregnant women, and another larger grouping was willing to lobby to restrict abortion at the state level, still another strategy included direct action.

As soon as abortion was legalized in 1973, anti-abortionists developed a series of harassment tactics. These included picketing hospitals and clinics, where the bulk of all abortions were performed, and harassing clinic personnel by following them home, distributing flyers to their neighbors, or picketing their houses. Joseph Scheidler, a Catholic from Chicago, developed the tactic of deploying “sidewalk counselors”-people who would attempt to convince any woman walking into the clinic not to have an abortion. But with the founding of Operation Rescue in 1986 by Randall Terry, a graduate of the Pentecostal Elim Bible Institute and a used car salesman, Catholic dominance of the anti-abortion movement dissolved. By 1990 Time magazine estimated that anti-abortion activists were two-thirds evangelicals and one-third Catholic.


Operation Rescue gained national publicity in the summer of 1988 with its four-month siege of Atlanta, during which over 1200 people were arrested. Staged to coincide with the Democratic Party’s national convention in Atlanta, the action galvanized clinic blockades across the country. But the publicity also sparked pro-choice mobilizations and injunctions to bar the “rescuers” from blockading and entering clinics. Between 1988-90 there were more than 400 blockades. By 1991-93 the number had fallen to 170 although there was an increase in incidents of property damage, hate mail and harassing phone calls. Finding the strategy of mass arrests difficult to sustain and having lost a lawsuit brought by the National Organization for Women, Operation Rescue (OR) activists switched to a “No Place to Hide” campaign, targeting doctors who performed abortions.

The campaign developed “Wanted” Posters that contained a photograph of the doctor and detailed her/his daily activities. The inflammatory rhetoric about doctors being “baby killers” eventually culminated in the murder of five clinic personnel in 1992-93. However, the murders and subsequent public reaction prodded Congress into passing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act in 1993. Previously, doctors who performed abortions were usually forced to take elaborate precautions to ensure their safety. But as public opinion reacted sharply against the murders, and as clinic violence was now made a federal offense, attacks on clinics slowly declined.

(Cont'd).....

STRATEGIES AND EXPERTISE

The Christian Coalition, under the leadership of Ralph Reed, created a network of local fundamentalist activists. Through its annual Road to Victory conferences it trained them in the nuts-and-bolts techniques of organizing. The Coalition stressed working at the precinct level to get a majority of Christian conservatives elected as delegates to their state Republican parties. They aimed to run for city councils, school boards and state legislatures.

The Coalition also encouraged its members to work within other conservative organizations. Most important has been the Concerned Women for America, founded by Beverly LaHaye in 1979. She organized women into prayer chapters first to oppose passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and then later to become “kitchen table lobbyists.” By 1991 they worked hard to win Clarence Thomas’ confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court, cheering him on when he arrived in the Senate hearing room to testify. They also lobbied for Congressional passage of the Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states to deny the legality of gay marriages (1996).

Another leading organization is the Family Research Council (FRC) headed by Gary Bauer, a domestic policy adviser for Reagan who served as undersecretary in the Department of Education. By the mid-1990s the Council had a mailing list of 250,000, a staff of seventy and a budget of $10 million. Bauer’s FRC works closely with Dr. Dobson’s Focus on the Family. The two organizations provide congresspeople with research on “pro-family” issues.



By the 1992 Republican Party convention, an estimated 47% of the delegates described themselves as “born again” Christians. Of the 2,000 delegates, 300 were members of the Christian Coalition. They secured, over the objection of other delegates, a party platform demanding a ban on all abortions, opposing civil rights for gays and lesbians, calling on the government to stop the sale of pornography and to condemn “obscene” art. The platform also endorsed school prayer and home schooling and opposed making contraceptives available in public schools.

Bush’s defeat that November was widely perceived as a rejection of that religious war. But without the support of the Christian right – indeed, the Christian Coalition distributed forty million voter guides to 246,000 churches – Republicans would have suffered even greater defeat, for according to Reed, evangelicals provided 46% of Bush’s total vote.

(Cont'd).....

THE CLINTON ERA

The Republican Party, with much help from the Christian Right, was able to defeat some of Clinton’s earliest and most important proposals and delayed or sabotaged his appointments. Most importantly, despite the fact that Clinton carefully avoided a single-payer health care plan, the Christian Right worked hard to defeat his so-called reform. The victories of the Christian Right showed that they had the capacity to work around issues without seeming to appear too dogmatic.

The 1994 elections were an incredible breakthrough for the Christian Right. In a midterm election, where turnout is generally low, they probably mobilized four million activists and reached 50 million voters. Exit polls revealed that about 25% of those who voted were white evangelicals, 70% of whom voted Republican. Congressional candidates backed by the Christian Coalition won 55% of their campaigns and fully 25% of the elected first-term representatives were members of evangelical churches.

The Republican agenda was the “Contract with America”. Although this 10-point Contract didn’t seem to have the fingerprints of the Christian right all over it, Ralph Reed detailed the behind-the-scenes negotiations over its provisions in his 1995 book, Active Faith. While Reed originally raised three proposals to be included-parental choice legislation around abortion, a permanent ban on taxpayer funding on abortion and a tax cut for families with children – Newt Gingrich explained that his goal was to have the Contract signed by all incumbent Republicans. Therefore, abortion and “other contentious issues” would have to be put on the back burner.

Reed reluctantly agreed provided the Republicans move quickly on the tax cut and work on social issues after the first hundred days in office. That is, the leaders of the Christian fundamentalist movement were willing to bide their time in building up alliances that would eventually lead to their demands.

THE 21ST CENTURY

With two decades of organizing experience, and having won some clear victories, the Christian Right nonetheless feels dissatisfied with its lack of results. They had become the backbone of the Republican Party, but were confined-constantly told to behave themselves and unable to achieve what they wanted. Having gained a place in the Republican Party, they have not been able to move their agenda forward.

They are not content with winning referendums opposing gay marriage in an environment where lesbians and gays are more accepted in US society than ever before. Despite Senator John Kerry’s assertions that “abortion should be the rarest thing in the world”, they still know that however circumscribed by restrictions, abortion is still legal. One of their very own people, John Ashcroft, was US Attorney General for four years, yet the Roe v. Wade ruling remains in force. The ranks of the Christian right are asking themselves: What kind of “power” is this?

9/11 brought a sea change to US politics. Fighting “the war on terror” (not the issues of abortion, evolution and gay rights) elected Bush II in 2004. That election has scared the liberal mainstream even further, opening up even more space for the Christian Right to inhabit. Today, with the Republicans entrenched as the ruling party and multiple Supreme Court appointments likely pending, the fundamentalists feel truly empowered to advance an openly anti-feminist, anti-secular and especially anti-Muslim agenda. Time will tell how aggressively, and with what success, they press their demands on Congress and the Bush regime.



Dianne Feeley is an editor of the bi-monthly socialist magazine, Against the Current, and a member of US socialist group Solidarity.

New Socialist Issue #51 – May/June 2005

Mother of God H n K you win i wont be avengeful anymore just stop the political writing

immm sorryyy

Lady shell, I love you to death but that dosen't mean I am going to make a sign of it and tote it around, which brings to mind the point Con was making, the signs are a pure threat plain and simple.