I don't know if this is true in 2020, but I am absolutely convinced that in the 1990s, if Evangelicals could have gotten away with a mass genocide of American LGBT folks... they definitely would have gone along with that shit. Back then the rhetoric in churches was absolutely insane, and it never got the public attention it should have because even non-evangelicals by and large had some pretty bad views about LGBT issues back then, too. But the pure, unvarnished hatred I saw in church in the 90s still sticks with me.
I don't know if I entirely buy the Clinton admin argument that if they didn't pass this bill then there would be been a successful constitutional amendment in it's wake. Just the idea that you can mobilize voter turnout on the premise that the other guys are going to be too friendly to the gays is very weird to me.
But the Bush administration tried to advance a constitutional amendment in 2004 right after Massachusetts legalized gay marriage and the supreme court decision around sodomy laws in 2003 lawrence v texas, which massively boosted their base turnout in his reelection and gay marriage was overturned in fucking California by popular vote in 2009.
It's truly insane how rapidly all this shit has changed. I think the deep hatred towards anything evangelical christian liberals in the US have explains a lot of this stuff when contrasted against european countries.
They absolutely did, and it was intentional. With the way that Covid is being handled, there could be an argument that a genocide is happening in the U.S. right now, to a certain extent.
I was talking to a friend about this and that with the rise of the internet and things like early new atheism (which has very weirdly become much more fash over time), stemmed from a deep rejection of everything evangelicals stand for.
We ended up agreeing that one of the big reasons the US is less terfy than the UK is that they don't associate their biggotry with anything religion related, and liberal american values are more than anything else an explicit rejection of anything evangelical related.
We've never been far from mass violence or genocide or ethnic cleansing. 20th and 21st century domestic politics have been the same reactionary arguments over and over with new actors and occasionally changing out subjects. The authoritarian streak in the American public is strong (hate to get nu-atheisty but pretty much because of American Protestantism).
You're right, and I think the streak in getting stronger and a lot of it is from American Protestantism. "New" atheism or whatever you want to call it definitely has it's cringey and outright very bad aspects, but IMO they're more right about stuff than a lot of folks here admit.
I don't know if this is true in 2020, but I am absolutely convinced that in the 1990s, if Evangelicals could have gotten away with a mass genocide of American LGBT folks... they definitely would have gone along with that shit. Back then the rhetoric in churches was absolutely insane, and it never got the public attention it should have because even non-evangelicals by and large had some pretty bad views about LGBT issues back then, too. But the pure, unvarnished hatred I saw in church in the 90s still sticks with me.
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I don't know if I entirely buy the Clinton admin argument that if they didn't pass this bill then there would be been a successful constitutional amendment in it's wake. Just the idea that you can mobilize voter turnout on the premise that the other guys are going to be too friendly to the gays is very weird to me.
But the Bush administration tried to advance a constitutional amendment in 2004 right after Massachusetts legalized gay marriage and the supreme court decision around sodomy laws in 2003 lawrence v texas, which massively boosted their base turnout in his reelection and gay marriage was overturned in fucking California by popular vote in 2009.
It's truly insane how rapidly all this shit has changed. I think the deep hatred towards anything evangelical christian liberals in the US have explains a lot of this stuff when contrasted against european countries.
The Reagan admin kind of did
They absolutely did, and it was intentional. With the way that Covid is being handled, there could be an argument that a genocide is happening in the U.S. right now, to a certain extent.
I was talking to a friend about this and that with the rise of the internet and things like early new atheism (which has very weirdly become much more fash over time), stemmed from a deep rejection of everything evangelicals stand for.
We ended up agreeing that one of the big reasons the US is less terfy than the UK is that they don't associate their biggotry with anything religion related, and liberal american values are more than anything else an explicit rejection of anything evangelical related.
We've never been far from mass violence or genocide or ethnic cleansing. 20th and 21st century domestic politics have been the same reactionary arguments over and over with new actors and occasionally changing out subjects. The authoritarian streak in the American public is strong (hate to get nu-atheisty but pretty much because of American Protestantism).
You're right, and I think the streak in getting stronger and a lot of it is from American Protestantism. "New" atheism or whatever you want to call it definitely has it's cringey and outright very bad aspects, but IMO they're more right about stuff than a lot of folks here admit.