When Tea Party activists gathered in Boston yesterday afternoon, they weren’t given license to shout their Small Government slogans at disinterested passersby—liberal activists of all stripes showed up to shout them down.
Who doesn’t love a good counter-protest?
The rally was led by the notoriously anti-gay missionary Scott Lively, who has spread his brand of dangerous homophobia in Uganda and other parts of Africa. (He’s even being sued for it, thank the good gay-friendly god.)
Don Gorton, a board member of gay-rights advocacy org Join the Impact’s Mass. branch, reported live to us:
How about we take this to the next level?
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A crowd of approximately 75 tea party activists gathered round the bandstand on the Common to hear speakers representing groups like “Show ID to Vote,” “Newsbusters” and the Mass. Republican Assembly. From the outset about 20 protestors from Join the Impact MA stood along the edge of the surrounding sidewalk quietly holding signs condemning Scott Lively and Brian Camenker for their homophobic advocacy.
Everything was going according to Tea-Party plan, but! Have no fear, Occupy Wall Street is here!
Just before Lively’s and Camenker’s turns at the podium came, roughly 100 exuberant protestors from the Occupy movement charged onto the scene chanting loudly and waving signs. The din became an uproar as Lively took the microphone. In his speech, Lively blasted conservatives who would minimize the importance of social issues. Then he denounced LGBT rights activists as “fascists” who were intent on destroying civilization. Camenker met with similar pushback as he criticized the work of GLSEN for allegedly promoting homosexual recruitment of public school students—in reference to the group’s efforts to prevent anti-LGBT bullying. Lively and Camenker were loudly booed, and much of their speech-making was drowned out by Occupy chants and “mic check” counterpoint.
Not all counter-protestors joined the chanting. I argued that Lively and Camenker should be allowed to speak, both out of respect for freedom of expression and because they tend to discredit the opposition to LGBT equality when their extremist views are publicized. Yet the passions these two hate group leaders stir are difficult to contain. Tea Party organizers learned that giving a platform to anti-gay bigotry effectively drowns out any other message they may seek to propagate. The Boston Police kept the peace while allowing everyone an opportunity to be heard. By the time anti-government activist Carla Howell took the podium after Camenker, most of the “tea party” attendees had frittered away, the momentum of the rally dissipated.
Right on. Totally radical. Now can Scott Lively be convicted for inciting anti-gay violence in Uganda already too? This dude practically inspired the “Kill The Gays” bill.
Photo via Paul Weiskel
E
A hat tip to these folk. Fascists need to be countered.
Kev C
Scott Lively is anti-fascist and so are OWS. It’s like Jekyl and Hyde.
iDavid
Sounds like Scott Lively should be renamed Scott Deadly.
billy wingardenson
Lively is behind the Kill the gay bill in Uganda . Welcome to xtianity
Hitler was catholic and went to catholic schools
Stalin was Russian orthodox and went to the ROChurch schools
The pope is catholic and grew up in germany in the 1930s.. in 2009 he ….
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-01-26/world/pope.holocaust.denial_1_bishop-richard-williamson-bishop-bernard-fellay-holocaust-denier?_s=PM:WORLD
B
Re No 4: http://articles.cnn.com/2009-01-26/world/pope.holocaust.denial_1_bishop-richard-williamson-bishop-bernard-fellay-holocaust-denier?_s=PM:WORLD …
While the pope seems to have undone the excommunication of some guy who denied the existence of Nazi gas chambers, it is worth nothing that
1. The individual was excommunicated by Pope John Paul II for “consecrating” men in “in unsanctioned ceremonies,” not over stated views regarding the Holocaust. The pope was undoing an excommunication because he felt that the theological “crime” did not warrant that response.
2. The individual’s comments about gas chambers were made only a few days before the announcement that this individual was no longer excommunicated, so the pope may not have been aware of those statements.
3. The individual’s opinion, while historically wrong, does not make him a true Holocaust denier: he stated, “I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them by gas chambers.” His disagreement is over the means of execution, and he seems to have confused the number of survivors (roughly 200,000) with the number executed (in reality more like 6 million). He’s also 68 years old. Incipient senility or an early onset of Alzheimer’s suggests itself as a possible cause, although mere stupidity might suffice, or just a need for reading glasses.
So, the only “news” is that an elderly Pope may have “stepped in it,” but most likely not out of malice. If the Pope wants to, I guess he could excommunicate the guy a second time because of his statements on the Holocaust, but you can’t excommunicate a guy who is currently excommunicated.
E
Hitler and Stalin were atheists, Stalin militantly so. Hitler might have used christian imagary in his speaches, but it was lip service to what was still quite a religious culture. How do you expect to beat religious types in a debate if you blatantly steal their most vacuous, crap arguments. People are not dicks because they’re religious any more than they’re dicks because they’re atheists, agnostics or vulcans. They’re dicks because they’re dicks. Scott Lively is a fascist. Therefore he is a dick.
F
The “Hitler was an atheist” argument is a myth conjured up by Christians trying to distance themselves from their own bigotry. Hitler was in fact a Christian.
E
And as I said, I don’t really care either way. What I’ve read would suggest that he wasn’t a genuine christian, merely used christian language and imagery to dupe people, much in the same way as he used left-wing language to dupe people (the socialism in national socialism for example.) The man was evil in a way that his belief or lack of belief in a deity doesn’t really come into play.