Good As You

Self-censoring for fear of retribution? Unlikely. Self-censoring because the faith community in Europe is shrinking rapidly and they need every congregant they can get to maintain some shred of relevancy? Much more likely.

Laura must live in an imaginary world where religious leaders aren't also savvy businessmen trying to ensure that money coming in from congregants exceeds the cost of maintaining the house of worship and its services.

It's impossible to argue with this. Meaning, there's a paradigm shift that needs to occur before argument is even possible. Disgusting.

As a member and volunteer of the Simon Weisenthal Center in Los Angeles, I am offended too.
As a human being committed to justice and equality for all, Higgin's article is crass and insane.

Homosexuals were ALSO victims of the Nazis...and continue to be the victims of casual, anti gay intimidation and violence SINCE the Holocaust.
Even gay children have been brutalized simply for being who and what they are.
Like Sakia Gunn and Lawrence King...to name just a few.

The IFI is extremely irresponsible for fomenting such as Higgins expresses.
Real lives are compromised, even lost. And as far as I can tell, it's not the people whom she believes require protection.

If she considers marrying a loved one, caring for children who have been abandoned, or committing in any way to productive citizenship as akin to Nazism...her insanity shouldn't be allowed such virulence.
It's that simple.

I wrote about this yesterday...it's totally crazy. We put up an action alert, too, at gayrights.change.org for folks to contact the Crowne Plaza O'Hare, a Chicago hotel that's hosting a conference by the Illinois Family Institute in October 2009. We're asking the hotel - especially in the wake of this comparison of LGBT people to nazis - to not let the IFI meet on their facilities. Crazy.

Thanks,Michael. Added a link.

Oh THAT Laurie Higgins; I found her creepy in the previous threads, but she's vaulted right to sickening with that piece of work.

"A willful ignorance of history" is a flaw she's seeing in OTHERS?!

Ms. Higgins is getting decidedly worse compared to my correspondence with her a couple years ago. The sky in her world must be a totally different colour, as Brian suggests.

I don't know whether to be disgusted or sick - maybe a bit of both. At least she's not around kids anymore at the Deerfield school.

db

"Ms. Higgins is getting decidedly worse compared to my correspondence with her a couple years ago."

Everyon I talk to says the same thing, Dave. Several of us who have dealt with her over the years have seen a drastic change.

The focus of my recent piece was how my correspondence with Laurie is always so majorly different than this public vitriol. But another angle would certainly be on the devolution of even her public hit pieces.

With recent losses, they must see the need to "ratchet up the rhetoric" to state it in Bushian prose. You have to wonder, though, if this will serve them well. I mean, they've been ringing the same bell for decades, but now (even given the fact that it hasn't worked very well), they are just slamming the clapper harder. Of course they don't have any other arguments to fall back on, plus the fear and loathing angle feels pretty comfortable to them. Could we be seeing the beginning of their "last hurrah"?

Public opinion is turning against them. Even their own are leaving the pack in droves. The economy is probably sting their pocket books pretty mightily. And Obama's reformation of the "faith based initiatives" is further hampering their funding starved factions. Their party has lost the last two national elections. Many of their "great" leaders have been dumped, or have chosen to bail (some have been jailed).

They could whimper away, but that isn't likely. Instead, they are becoming more and more vitriolic, louder, and more dangerous. Sounds a lot like a wounded animal that has been backed into a corner, fighting with every last ounce of strength to stave off the inevitable. Or, maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part.

Outrageous! Who does she think she is going to convince with this? She is essentially calling churches (potential allies?) who are not as strident as she thinks they should be "Nazi sympathizers". Talk about alienating both sides of the issue. Creative history rewriting aside, how stupid could she be? I don't see how this convinces anyone to come to the aid of her organization.

Well, the same orgs, like FRC and so on deliberately drove a wedge between blacks and gay people over calling the struggle of gay folks a civil rights issue.
This was a way of fomenting offense in blacks over the term. But the reality is the parallels are real, one only has to look and not that closely. It all passes scrutiny.
However, why wouldn't Jews take great offense at THIS sort of tripe?
Jews, blacks and gays have more in common with how they've been treated by the dominant culture than this unbelievable suggestion she's making.

And the most important fact of all: regardless of if one of their number dies violently. Even when gay children are stabbed to death or executed in their own classrooms or abandoned by their own families, gay people respond with legal due process. Peaceful protest and rallies, accessing the courts and compassionate integration.
THIS is also a serious parallel to how gays have responded to abuse, similar to that of blacks and Jews.

Gay people in general have not organized to commit acts of violence. Make bombs, arm themselves with guns, even in self defense when congregating together.

They hate the comparison to being black or Jewish, but make comparisons to pedophiles, murderers and Nazis.

However ludicrous, Laurie Higgins must count on her supporters to be THAT stupid and THAT cowardly and THAT ignorant not to know the difference and challenge her crap.

Deep down she must know she's stretching the limits of hyperbole here. Once you compare your opponent to the Nazis, there really isn't anywhere else you can go.

Has the SPLC been notified of this?