Dan is right about this. Our ideological opponents often bristle — unconvincingly, by the way — at the idea that their beliefs are built of the same stuff as racism, and that they still exhibit outright racism, and its cousin, which I like to call “white-splaining,” wherein they try to co-opt racial minorities for their own cause because they and only they know what’s good for them. While I find it unfortunate that the story about Robertson’s anti-gay remarks went viral seemingly before anyone had read the full GQ interview, I find it revelatory that our adversaries have jumped in line behind Robertson so willingly. They know about the racist remarks, and apparently — and not unexpectedly — they just don’t bother them very much. Far right Christians from Bryan Fischer to Sarah Palin only attempt to appear racially inclusive when it’s politically expedient, and when they do, it comes off as the duplicity that it is.
Here’s part of what Dan had to say:
I actually thought what he said about African-Americans in the South under Jim Crow was so much more offensive. At a time when an African-American looked funny at a white person they could be lynched, oddly enough he never heard any of them complaining to him about the circumstances…but this is America and sex is [something] we’d rather be talking about than race or anything else. So the fact that he invoked gay people’s rear ends means that’s going to be the conversation instead of the really patently offensive, absurdly revisionist things he said about African-Americans.”
Add that to the fact that, among a certain shrinking contingent of Americans, it’s still considered socially acceptable to be anti-gay, and you get a bigotry train that’s left the station before the wingnuts aboard have even had time to consider the fact that they’re flying their racism flag in a way they usually only do at home when they’re in like-minded company.
