Failed Republican perennial candidate Alan Keyes and pro-life advocate Randall Terry have been participating in demonstrations against Pres. Obama and his support of abortion at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana, where Obama is speaking today at the graduation ceremony and receiving an honorary degree.
Both Keyes AND Terry are not famous for abandoning their homosexual children. I cannot find any condemnation of either of them by conservatives for abandoning their homosexual children.
I also have to admit that neither Keyes nor Terry actually said they were fighting for the rights of the unborn since “you can always kill or abandon them later and if they’re gay, not one conservative will utter a word against you.’ They just expressed that with their actions, just as conservatives expressed approval with their silence. After all, making your teenager homeless and penniless for the BEING crime of homosexuality, as Alan Keyes did in 2005 to his daughter Maya, is an utterly moral and righteous thing to do in the moral code of social conservatism. Randall Terry did as much as he could to destroy his son, Jamiel, pre-emptively for the crime of telling the world that he, Jamiel, was gay, according to a story in the Washington Post. In contrast, saying some bad words and getting angry with a beauty queen who just ground her stiletto heel in the face of millions of people who are denied equality in the United States of America is the blackest evil and in the moral equivalency of social conservatism an appropriate justification for sentencing all those millions of people to the hell of inequality forever and ever, amen. (NOT!)
Here’s the deal, people: pro-lifers/anti-abortionists are angry with Obama because he is expressing his opinion. Wasn’t it just a few days ago that expressing an opinion that outraged homosexuals was a sacred act of self-expression? Now the shoe is on the other foot. Now suddenly there’s no sacred First Amendment right because Obama’s opinion has consequences. Well, social conservatives, that’s why homosexuals were and are so angry with Carrie Prejean and the National Organization for Marriage. Her opinion — which also is the opinion of Obama, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Hillary Clinton — has devastating, life-damaging, even life-destroying consequences for homosexuals. That’s why SOME of us were not all that kind or tactful about expressing our objections. The cruelty and injustice of conservatives who then loudly proclaimed this as their justification for reversing their support for — or continuing to refuse support for any remote facsimile of — equality for homosexuals is beyond measure.
And if the lives of children are so precious and sacred, why have social conservatives been so quiet about all of the lesbian and gay teenagers thrown out of their homes for the BEING crime of homosexuality? Why have Alan Keys and Randall Terry gotten a pass for their abuse and abandonment of their own children? Why are social conservatives so comfortable with this moral crime?
i think you are wrong about the anger of prolifers concerning obama’s notre dame speech. as a conservative catholic i am upset that he is being honored by notre dame. by all means invite him or anyone else. but don’t honor him. this president twice voted against a bill in il. to provide medical care to an infant who had who has survived an abortion. how much further left on this issue can you go. i would like to point out that i do not approve of the church’s stance on homosexuality and the role of women within the church. i think more people share this view than you think.
I’m gay and I am definitely not a conservative and I am definitely not a liberal. I stand for individual rights, the right to live free from the initiation of force from other people or the government. The government’s purpose then is to protect those rights by apprehending people who initiate force (fraud is another means of initiating it) be they inside the boundaries of the country or are an organized threat from outside the country. The courts are the means of adjudicating disputes.
I’m not in favor of gay rights or any special rights. A crime is a crime is a crime. Period. I don’t care what a person’s reasons are, when he initiates force against another, he’s crossed the line.
I don’t know whether the conservatives you talk about committed a crime when they disowned their gay children or not. The point is, feeling sorry for a person because he is gay and giving him some special status is turning him to an invalid of some sort who is incapable of defending himself. Please, give it up.
My opinion as to the cause of homosexuality is that it is unknown. I don’t happen to think that a person chooses it or can reverse it. Thus I don’t hold a gay person morally responsible for that choice. I do hold him morally responsible for the choices over which he does have control.
In your article, here, I think you slipped into much of the current knee-jerk reaction behavior that permeates our society around this subject. I don’t think that supports gays one bit. To isolate that issue as key to a straight or gay person’s behavior in reference to gay people seems to me ignorant and short-sighted. If you are truly interested in gays getting respect, then I think the way to do it is to show respect, find out the whole story and demand that all involved live up to being an honorable and just person.
There are plenty of straight people who have been disowned because they were moochers or risk-takers that caused all kinds of grief for the people around them – often the ones who care for them most. The same with gay people. My experience is that they have to be judged on the content of their character, not their sexuality, color of skin or any other superficial means of categorizing them.
And the point I’m making is not meant to imply that I’m defending Keyes or Terry or Prejean or her unseemly judge or anyone. And I agree with you that people with public voices have an impact on other people’s thoughts and actions and they need to be responsible for that. Further I would come down on a person if he acted unjustly toward another based solely on something that the other has no choice about.
I put Obama in a separate category though. That’s because he holds a gun in his hand. Everything he issues as an executive order or signs into law or arbitrarily steals from a person is acccomplished by force. If his use of force is not in protection of individual rights, then he initiates force against people with no more moral standing in my mind than a common criminal. He’s as wild as any cowboy with a six-shooter ever was when it comes to throwing around his influence and his use of force. So he’s by far the most dangerous of all the people you mentioned in your article.
Thanks for your writing. I like it although, as you can see, I don’t always agree with you.
my darling, i love ya more and more everyday. i concur!! freakin’ hypocrites ALL.
Well, to be fair, I don’t think guys like Keyes (can’t speak for the other guy; never heard of him) really speak for most conservatives anymore than nutters like Cindy McKinney speak for liberals.
They’re all bread-and-circuses, all entertainment. Sort of like Howard Stern.
Now, that said- if Keyes tossed out a dependent daughter merely because of her homosexuality, that’s- well, what’s the right word? There are so many nasty ones. Pick your favorite and I’ll back it.
I don’t self-identify as a conservative so I guess I take some of the really “out there” types with a grain of salt and assume most conservatives don’t support them.
Which, again, does not excuse child abandonment/endangerment/general SOB-ness.
I liked your comment about the shoe being on the other foot. I’m constantly amused- and frequently attacked for noting- that when Saudi Arabians or Afghans marry off their 6-or-8-year-old daughters to 50-year-old men, it’s proof of their barbarism- but when members of the polygamous groups in the U.S. hitch up 12-year-olds to 50-year-olds, it’s “freedom of religion” for a “persecuted sect.”
Shoe on the other foot, indeed.
Yes, Cynthia, I as a Pro-Life supporter committed the nasty sin of “silence gives consent” when it came to the transgressions of Alan Keyes and Randall Terry. I do it because much like the African-American community and the gay/lesbian community, I have to hang onto and protect those who will go the extra mile for my cause. AT ALL COSTS.
I cannot tell you how it infuriates me to see people on the Right willing and able enough to crap on me and my fellow Pro-Lifers every time one of their intellectual friends complains about our “misbehavior.” If there is one group of folks in Modern Conservatism that has done more to advance its standing in American life, it’s the Pro-Life folks. And this is how we are repaid?!
Yeah, what Keyes and Terry did to their kids is repellent, but I can’t spare them. They fight for LIFE, regardless of imperfections.
Brad S,
People who abandon their vulnerable teenagers should be convicted of some form of criminal negligence or manslaughter and go to jail for a very long time if that child dies. Their actions are not an imperfection and legally should be a crime. I believe the people who throw their gay children out of their homes reveal an extremely deranged level of narcissism. They are shamed by their child’s homosexuality and their revenge is to punish the child with the severest penalty they can get away with.
I believe conservatism would be a MUCH larger movement if the pro-life and Creationist/Intelligent Design extremists who pose as owning the movement were not the poison pills that many fiscal conservatives find them to be. Thank goodness more fiscal conservatives like me are finding that we can just be fiscal conservatives and I think we represent the future of conservatism.
Cynthia
Cough, cough! You ahve been infected with the Filthy Blog Pox. Be sure to spread the wealth.
Cough, cough! You have been infected with the Filthy Blog Pox. Be sure to spread the wealth.
Oops! MESsed up that last one. Here we go.
With all due respect— I believe you are letting your emotions of this obviously very personal issue get the best of you. I can, in no way, speak of or would defend what Mr Keyes or Mr Terry have done with their own children. Disowning your children for the reason of sexuality is silly in my opinion….BUT — The Notre Dame/Obama issue is bigger than him just giving an opinion. This is a man so radically in favor of abortion that he voted for the killing of babies born alive. Voted for it multiple times, while doing everything in his power to increase abortion throughout America and the World (with your tax dollars no less). Meanwhile, lying about his intentions. Notre Dame, which is founded on the catholic belief system of not only no abortion but no birth control because of its possible destruction of life. For them to allow Obama to represent such a radical view on their campus is akin to Miss California going to Gay Pride Day and saying homosexuals should be locked up.
As forMiss California, she was asked a question that she had no choice but to answer and was not hateful……Yet she has been called a “stupid bitch”. The reaction was not to the gay community’s opposition to her opinion but to the hatred and intolerance that was shown to her in the name of tolerance.
I just dont know anyone that would treat their gay friends, children, or family with anything but love…..no matter what their opinion of homosexuality is…..On the other hand…..Having seen how religious people have been treated in California…being spit on and swore at and bullied…all in the name of tolerance…. to demonize Miss California as hateful is a joke.
Obama arrogantly walked into a Catholic University demanded open minds where his has been always been closed. He demanded acceptance where he has given absolutely none. He represented on demand abortion even after live birth at a place where that is blasphemy. He knew that but went anyway…..The University knew that but invited him anyway…..Its bigger than a slight difference of opinion….it was the disrespect of Notre Dame’s core beliefs on their soil while being honored by them…..it was just difficult for those with those core beliefs to take— yet i didnt hear anyone call him a “stupid bitch”.
Beware of those who scream for tolerance….they seem to be the last to offer it….in my experience….
Alecj,
My focus was not on Obama or Notre Dame. It was on the terrible, terrible things that Alan Keyes and Randall Terry have done with the support and approval of the social conservative community.
Actually, Carrie Prejean’s answer was misinformed — she said gays can choose to marry and legally we can’t almost everywhere and have no federal recognition or protection when we do — was deceitful — she intentionally created the image of an “Ozzie and Harriet” family that she did not have — and was extremely hateful because it IS hateful to say you believe a minority should have hundreds fewer rights than you have (over 1300 rights come with marriage, I hear tell) and should not be equal.
The horrible things that religious people have been doing to lesbians and gays are considered so ordinary that they are not news. The atrocities that Keyes and Terry committed against their vulnerable children are an example. The comparatively few reprisals after Prop. 8 passed have been blown all out of proportion to the devastation that inequality wreaks in the lives of lesbians and gays.
Also, the media love Obama so much that I doubt anyone blaspheming him is going to get media coverage.
Also, I think Perez Hilton was so accustomed to being in his gay ghetto that he spoke as hurt and angry people do in their own homes. I believe he would not have spoken that way ever to a general audience — he never thought he was talking to one. He was in his gay ghetto talking to his peeps — I doubt it ever crossed his mind that anyone outside the gay ghetto would be listening. But anti-gay marriage zealots saw their chance to use the rules of Saul Alinsky and use him to demonize all lesbians and gays everywhere forever and ever for a BEING crime. Why is no one empathizing with our very legitimate hurt and anger over the devastation that inequality does to our lives?
And why is no one condemning as an actual crime the atrocity of throwing out their homosexual children committed by Keyes and Terry? Their actions are millions of times worse than calling a cruel, shallow, avaricious and opportunistic young woman a “bitch” and a “cunt,” which are words that no sensible woman allows to bother her. When you show that you will do anything to protect people who have done genuine harm to their own children, you really have no case any more about protecting the lives of the unborn.
Final thought: we are not fighting for tolerance. We are working for equality.
Cynthia
I am Randall Terry’s son, and I just wanted to leave a response concurring with this article. I thought it was thoughtful and argued the point beautifully. To see some of the responses to this article is what really surprised me. Neither the Keyes family or my Family were rich, but we were certainly upper middle class and because of the type of work our parents did we got perks on the side. I’ve never been to the Keyes home, but I know the home we lived in before my parents divorced was over 6,500 sq ft. with guest houses and other out buildings, in ground pool, basketball/tennis court, etc. When it was time to go to college cost wasn’t even discussed. I personally never had to have a job outside of working with my father, and then all of a sudden there was no more money, no money for school, no money to help pay for gas etc. when you grew up expecting this from your parents. What disturbs me about people like Maya Keyes’ and my father is that instead of loving us and accepting us as we are as Christ did what a different world this would be. If they would separate one’s personal Faith and interpretation of the Bible from political life and public policy and law most of these arguments would disappear. The only one that would/could remain is abortion. Here is the bottom-line, Jesus said love the Lord thy God with all your heart, mind, and strength; and love your neighbor as yourself and that these were the two greatest commandments. So the only logical thing is that government cannot legislate the heart, but it can legislate how people’s actions affect others. To this day I have not been able to have it explained me how my marriage effects my next store neighbors. If this is the case we should blame Hollywood for setting such a bad example. It’s ridiculous. The religious right needs to follow a great parable and pick the log out of its own eye before it goes for the splinter in ours. Because you see we are really not the hypocrites here. We are not the ones who are luke warm who Christ said He would spew out of His mouth. We believe that what we are doing is moral. Our conscience tells us we are fine, it’s the bs spewed from the pulpits in America when their families are falling apart. When Ted Haggards are out there; it is ridiculous. Tend to your own backyard, and let us lead our lives. Let us live the promise of the Constitution, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” There are the dregs of society in every community, but it is always been the case that it is because these are the oppressed in society. When that oppression ends the community thrives. It’s already the case in the GLBT community. All statistics point towards movement in more traditional lives now that it is being allowed through marriage. Anyway I am finally going to go… I went on for a lot longer than intended… but feel free to contact me….
Dear Jamiel,
I’ve been worried about you — and also Maya Keyes. How are you supporting yourself? Have you been able to go to college? Did you ever contact any gay and lesbian groups like the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to see if they could refer you to organizations that could help you? One organization offered Maya Keyes a scholarship, but I don’t know how she’s been doing since she was dis-owned.
What I think you are saying is that when lesbians and gays have marriage equality and equality with respect to other civil rights, then our community will become more traditional and will thrive. I agree.
I am going to continue to speak out against homosexual children being thrown away by their social conservative parents. I also will continue to challenge the social conservative community, which watches this abuse and approves either actively — by congratulating the parents for their values — or passively — by doing nothing.
Please keep in touch and let me know how you are doing.
Cynthia
I am a social Conservative and an (unrepentant) Christian. I think abandoning your children is a sin and had I knew that two prominent Social Conservatives had done so, I would have made it a point to inform anyone who listened to their opinions of this fact. I don’t believe for a second that most Christian individuals would agree that abandoning was the right thing to do, no matter the circumstances. I have not heard one Conservative I know bash Dick Cheney for his love and acceptance of his daughter.
I however don’t think not sending your child to college and making them support their selves is not nearly the crime as killing unborn humans.
I was abandoned by my parents when I was very young. (4) My little brother(1) and I were shuffled off to a foster home where we, and every kid (100’s) who passed thru the door was sexually, physically and mentally abused. I was able to get out when I was sixteen and take my brother with me. There was no college or support for us. We rolled up our sleeves, BECAUSE we lived in America, where we could pursue our chance at Life, Liberty and the puruit fo happiness.
(Yes I have spent many years trying to get foster care reform and have those who coverered up and aided in the abuse arrested or exposed with no luck. It is like welfare, no one wants to deal with the aftermath.)
I grew up with a scar on the top of my head that was always labeled as a birth mark on my head, but it was a failed adortion scar…my twin was not so lucky to only have had a scar. Though my childhood was traumatic and still causes me pain and nightmares, I am alive to deal with them, my twin never made it past the hospital dumpster. He had absolutely NO chance for life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness. He never had boot straps to pull up. He never lived in a free country. He never experienced opportunity. He never got to fight for his rights in a Democratic land. He never got to cry defeated, bloody and unbowed and get up the next day to unfurl his resistance flag one more time.
I love your Blog, it is a breath of fresh air and what I think is badly needed in the Conservative party. I will continue reading and invite my friends to do so likewise!
Jack Galk,
Thank you. I am sorry you have had such a rough time of it and for the loss of your twin.
I’m sure you know the statistics better than I do of how difficult foster children’s lives are when they are tossed out of the system at age 18. I was listening to a show about foster care on NPR a month or so ago and the expert said a large number of these children become homeless and die. If the people who throw out their gay and lesbian children have not directly killed them, they have shown a reckless disregard for their children’s lives.
One of the things that opening up adoption to gay and lesbian couples may accomplish is that increasing the number of loving, stable homes for unwanted children may reduce the number of abortions. But marriage equality would really help with that because then each child adopted by same-sex couples would have two parents with a lifelong legal commitment to his or her well-being.
Cynthia
Just because someone supports your position on whatever platform you hold dear it does NOT in any way, shape, or form excuse an iota of the criminal douchebaggery involved in throwing a child into the cold for what they are.
And anyone who thinks it does is scum by proxy, period.
.-= Graumagus´s last blog ..So THIS is how they planned on paying for that health care bill =-.