So I go to C-Punch to see what the Chaos Crowd are saying, and in the middle of yet another back-slapping-we-told-you-so piece, I come across this insight:
"If there was a visual premonition of why George Bush would achieve a popular majority beyond challenge it was probably the photographs of gay couples celebrating their marriages outside San Francisco's city hall. America is a very Christian country. In the regular national survey conducted by the University of Chicago in 2002, 53 per cent of the adult population identified themselves as Protestant, 25 per cent as Catholic, 3 per cent as Christians of some other denomination, 3 per cent as adhering to 'other religions', 2 per cent as Jewish and 14 per cent as having 'no religion'. That's a lot of Christians, and though many of them may have had a mature tolerance for the preference of Dick and Lynn Cheney's daughter Mary, a strong percentage felt very strongly that state sanction of same sex marriage was going way too far.
"There was a ballot initiative in Ohio to ban gay marriage and it was probably what helped Bush overcome the smoldering ruins of the Ohio economy and the increasing unpopularity of the war."
Help me here -- are Cockburn & St. Clair suggesting that gay couples should have held their ceremonies in heavily-fortified windowless bunkers, lest they ruffle the tender sensibilities of God Fearin' Folk? Are the fags to blame? And are all Christians queer-phobic? I know plenty who are not -- in fact, most Christians I know are nowhere near the Away With Thee, Sodomite image presented above. Kerry received over 50 million votes. How many liberal or progressive Christians do you think contributed to that?
The country is indeed split along cultural lines, but the assessments offered by the purists do little to clarify matters, esp when these assessments are expressed through cackling and crowing.
DP