This is sparked by a comment by Gary Rosen, via Andrew Sullivan.
From the CWA Web site:
We are the nation's largest public policy women's organization with a rich 28-year history of helping our members across the country bring Biblical principles into all levels of public policy. . . .
Mission Statement
The mission of CWA is to protect and promote Biblical values among all citizens - first through prayer, then education, and finally by influencing our society - thereby reversing the decline in moral values in our nation.
From the Constitution of the United States of America:
Amendment I:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . .
A note on that "moral values" comment: this seems to be another group for which "morality" is a checklist of dos and don'ts, without much underpinning in a general attitude toward others. You can see that they lack respect for people in general by the way they refer to those they disagree with, whom they regard as "enemies of society" (see more on that below). "Society," of course, is something that should adhere strictly to their beliefs.
If you go to the "Culture and Family" page, you see the usual grossly distorted renderings of current events, all from the paranoid freak school of journalism: it's all a plot by immoral homosexual activists to deestroy America. Don't ask for rationality, here. That is something that is quite explicitly outside the parameters of the discussion. It begins with religious thought, which by definition is not rational, and carries over through the use of debater's tricks into "discourse." Read "monologue." You can't have a dialogue with someone who refuses the acknowledge the validity of the concept of different viewpoints.
It's another case of using religion to advance a political agenda, which always leads me to doubt the sincerity of the participants.
This is all in the service of a group that actually does want to destroy America by eroding our basic Constiitutional principles and establishing a religious test for just about everything -- their religion, of course.
Following standard practice on the Christianist right, when you call them on a distortion or fabrication, as I know from personal experience, it was "taken out of context" and "misquoted" and . . . . (insert lame excuse of choice). It's another "hate the sin, love the sinner" line. Tim Hardaway at least was honest about his feelings toward gays.
Like all such groups, CWA must have an enemy to justify itself. The enemy is much broader than just gays or feminists. It's secularism, on which this country was founded. So, if your enemy is the foundation of American society, what does that make you?
No, I'm not going to link to them. I don't do hate groups. I realize that term gets bandied about too much, but I have no other label: if someone is continually working against the interests of other members of their society, using a particular group as scapegoats for the ills that they themselves are largely responsible for, and doing so by not only refusing to accord them basic human dignity but by denying their humanity [in this case, limiting their descriptions of that group, gays, to "homosexual," which describes behavior, rather than calling us "gay," which describes our identities and culture -- and that's just the starting point], and doing so through the use of distortions, fabrications, misrepresentations, and scare tactics -- in fact, it goes beyond scapegoating into demonizing -- then what would you call them? Aside from "anti-American," I mean.
Note:
There is a longish post in the works about why I have credibility problems in the sincerity department with groups like CWA, Focus on the Family, etc. Unfortunately, my brain has been out of commission (too many reviews, too little time), which is why you've been getting so many cut-and-paste posts here lately. It's coming. Sometime.
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