Save us, George Lakoff! Part I - Beware the Gays

Okay, so Rick Perry's latest has taken a righteous pounding from the zeitgeist that is the Internet.  And by righteous, I mean "deserved in every way, according to any possible theory of justice."  But, after several hearty laughs at the Governor's expense, one question made me take a step back.

"When did we start conflating religious freedom with religious oppression?  How on Earth did those two things become the same, even to the same people who conflate racial equality and racism?" (Okay, that's two questions, but you get the point.)

I started to wonder - what's really new here?  Is this more blatant, or any more heinous than the usual Conservative crap claptrap?  Why did this particular ad generate so much instant disgust?

Then I asked myself, What Would Lakoff Do?  He'd take it apart.  Let's do the same.  Let us be not content with our outrage, let us know whence it comes:

"I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian - " wait, stop there, go no further.  This is beautiful message management, and classic Conservative positioning.  It's the declarative equivalent of "When did you last beat your wife, sir?"  Conservatives don't just manage the message with carefully-chosen euphemisms and dysphemisms (that usually descend into outright misrepresentation).  They manage the message with their presuppositions, which are always constructed with equal care.  To wit, the subtext: there are people trying to make Christians ashamed of their Christianity!  These are the same people who are - gasp! - okay with gays serving in our armed forces.

"...but you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military, but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas, or pray in schools."  Anyone trained in critical thinking recognizes this as eight pages of rhetoric packed in a 39-word phrase.  For the sake of brevity, I'll limit myself to the top five manipulations herein:

1. Non sequitur.  DADT and the First Amendment do have something to do with one another, but it's not what Rick Perry's telling you it is.
2. Scare tactic and innuendo, two Conservative classics. Juxtaposing gun-toting gays with schoolchildren = the gays are coming for your kids!
3. Proof surrogate - why is this wrong?  Because I said so!
4. Hyperbole - of course our kids are allowed to "openly" celebrate Christmas.  This is my main point, to which I shall return anon.  But there's that presupposition again, packed right and tight for you into one word - the "openly" of "openly celebrate Christmas."
5. Argument from tradition: "...when gays can serve openly in the military..." 

There's nothing new with the absurd notion that there is something so inherently wrong about "alternate" sexual identity that people who so self-identify should of course be second-class citizens.  The Judeo-Christian law upon which people base such judgments says there's something equally wrong with masturbation, oral sex, and any other sexual activity which does not lead to procreation.

(I'll leave you to consider on your own the ramifications of this, and just how many people with those sickening signs are hateful, horny, hairy-handed hypocrites.)

This is perfectly understandable (whether or not it's forgivable is up to you); the moral underpinning of that law comes from a time when humanity's survivability was in question.  Now, conversely, we are in danger of - some say, guilty of - overwhelming the available resources of an entire planet by sheer strength of numbers. Don't you think it's time some of you reevaluated your millenia-old reasoning process?

More to the point, stop demonizing people because you don't like their choice of romantic partner.  It's gauche.  You don't have to accept them as your equal - it's your right to hold as bass-ackwards a world-view as you choose.  But to insinuate, in any way, that this group of people is by their very nature a threat to the strength of this nation...it's cheap politics.  Cheap, and atavistic.

My sister, a gay Army Reservist, points out that it's also just plain stupid: "It's not like people are lining up to serve.  How is turning away a whole bunch of people who want to serve making our country stronger?"

In Part II, we come to the crux of the matter (see what I did there?), and I try not to go all Hulk Smash on my laptop.

Thanks go to Elle Deau and Fake Against the Machine for most of the links in these posts.