Saturday, August 18, 2012

Why FRC is NOT the same as the pro-equality side

If we had an organization on our side that was saying the sort of things about evangelical Christians that FRC says about LGBT people, then that would be a different story. And I would add that I would be the first to condemn such a group! But the fact of that matter is that we don't.have.that.kind.of.group. Human Rights Campaign is not printing brochures that begin by comparing Christian marriages to man-on-horse (complete with horse photo). GLAAD is not launching websites referring to gender-different marriages as "fake" and saying those marriages "destroy lives." PFLAG is not inviting someone like Bryan Fischer to speak at its annual conference. FRC does all of that and more than I could ever put in words! 
Look, I HATE having this conversation. My instinct yesterday afternoon was to react with nothing but full-throated support for FRC and its staff and to articulate the concerns that many of us who work in politics feel. These heartfelt concerns should be completely detached from the debate, no matter the things I mentioned above. 
But when groups like NOM work overtime politicizing this, I'm not going to play pretend. If HRC were on the receiving end of yesterday's heinous act, the facts pertaining to HRC's decades of work would remain the exact same today as they were yesterday. Same goes with FRC. And while perspective is needed and nothing compares to the brutality that is gun violence, the facts surrounding the Family's Research Councils' nineteen year mission are rhetorically brutal. We LGBT people are undoubtedly less free an less equal because of them. That is their mission. That is not ours.
Jeremy is right.  THis is   a false equivalence and  isn't helpful. The pro-LGBT groups aren't  calling for conservative Christians to be imprisoned, have their relationships torn apart, their children kidnapped.  We're not saying that they engage in bestiality or abuse children.  We don't say that the state should prevent them from practicing their faith, and we don't say the state should make them live under the tenets of OUR faith (and despite what they say,  many of us DO go to church...).   As the saying goes, one of these things is not like the other....