I understand the issue: on the one hand, Barack Obama is now in favor of same-sex marriage (for the record, so am I, and have been considerably more honest about it than he ever was). On the other hand, African-American church-goers have been told for some time that Mormonism is a cult (it is the official opinion of MoeLane.com that Mormonism is not*). What to do, what to do?
:shrug: If you’re an African-American voter? Stay home. That’s not partisan hackery, either: more accurately, partisan hackery is lining up nicely with the uncomfortable truth that politicians will never take a group seriously if they know that they can also utterly take it for granted. So it doesn’t really matter whether I am being self-serving, here (I totally am) – I’m also being right.
And for those saying “But there’s an election!” I can only note: neighbor, there’s always going to be an election. At some point, you have to rip off the bandage.
Moe Lane
*There are many sites out there where an argument or discussion along those lines would be welcome; this is not one of them. That is an official site policy statement from the site moderator.
It’s gratifying actually to hear that some African-American pastors want to judge President Obama by the content of his campaign agenda and not the color of his skin. It’s like we’ve moved beyond tokenism and are actually asking whether we want this Brave New World of gay marriage, taxpayer funded abortions and huge Government dependency. MLK Jr would dig it. Forward!
Can we work in jabs at Scientology every time they call Mormonism a cult?
One point missing here, Moe, is the decision to phrase the gay marriage issue as being “like the civil rights movement”.
Last time I checked, there’s no “Jim Crow” laws keeping gays locked into sharecropping, banning them from straights-only lunch counters, requiring that they use separate restrooms, etc. etc.
The wedge between the Dems and the black churches, traditional keepers of the civil rights torch, runs deeper than just gay marriage, eh?
Mew
:shrug: If you’re an African-American voter? Stay home.
…, or you can come over to the dark side, we have cookies. 🙂
And to top that, you’ll feel much more at home here than over there, the water’s just fine.
Granted that Mormonism has a slightly weird set of beliefs, but it’s certainly not a cult. If you want to see members of a real cult in action, watch the vast majority of this nation’s black voters line up once again this fall to cast their ballots for the current president — despite the fact that he has proven hostile to their general social conservatism, and constantly pursues policies which are deleterious to their overall economic well-being, at every single turn. If you’re reading this, and you are such a person, it doesn’t have to be this way…
L. Sprague DeCamp best defined the terms, I think: A religion is an unprovable belief system into which a person is born. A cult is an unprovable belief system into which a person converts.
I’d actually go further and suggest that Black Americans take a good look in the mirror and prior to making a decision make a list of the values they consider to be most important in their own lives. Only after they do so should they honestly compare their values to the values of the two major parties.
Of course this might work for a lot of moderates as well.
Thanks.