Saturday, February 21, 2004
Telling Similarities
"Homosexuals in Goverment - 1950"
I haven't heard too many anti-gay marriage Republicans or pundits or right wing media squawk toys bellowing lately about the God blessed sanctity of the Declaration of Independence. You know, only recently they couldn't shut up about it. Maybe they actually read it and this part made them nervous:
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THEN (1950) and NOW (2004).
Let's revisit Tom DeLay's "party of traditional values", circa 1950, as it relates to an amendment to the Vorys amendment* to bar homosexuals from specific federal government employment. Somehow allowing homosexuals to be employed by the federal government in 1950 poses a clear danger (national security threat) to the very institution of government and the nation itself. Just as anti-gay marriage activists today howl that homosexuals are somehow or another a grave danger (national security threat) to the institution of marriage and family. The language THEN is just as wild-eyed and vitriolic and full of excitable alarmist quiverings as today's right-wing panic mongering and fear conjuring surrounding many current gay rights issues - including a good deal of the more dramatic hooting concerning the marriage and civil union debate.
*[Ed Note:] For brief background on the Vorys amendment: See: Neutrality Acts 1935-41
What follows are excerpts from the Congressional Record volume 96 Part 4, 81st Congress, 2nd Session, March 29 - April 24, 1950. WHERE NOTED: For comparrison sake I've inserted remarks from current anti-gay marriage/anti-gay rights activists and groups.
Comments from the floor of the House of Representatives, 1950.
Subject: Homosexuals in Government.
(Blaring BOLD TEXT emphasis and section heads are mine)
[BEGIN EXCERPTS:]
THEM TRADITIONAL "FACTS OF NATURE"
MILLER, Arthur Lewis, (Republican) Nebraska
[THEN - Mr. Miller:] Mr. Chairman, I realize that I am discussing a very delicate subject I cannot lay the bones bare like I could before medical colleagues. I would like to strip the fetid, stinking flesh off of this skeleton of homosexuality and tell my colleagues of the House some of the facts of nature. I cannot expose all the putrid facts as it would offend the sensibilities of some of you. It will be necessary to skirt some of the edges, and I use certain Latin terms to describe some of these individuals. Make no mistake several thousand, according to police records, are now employed by the Federal Government.
I offer this amendment to the Vorys amendment* in good faith... [...] Recently Mr. Peurifoy, of the State Department, said he had allowed 91 individuals in the State Department to resign because they were homosexuals. Now they are like birds of a feather, they flock together. Where did they go?
You must know what a homosexual is. It is amazing that in the Capital City of Washington we are plagued with such a large group of those individuals. Washington attracts many lovely folks. The sex crimes in the city are many.
PLAGUES!, PERVERTS!, DEPAVITY!, DISEASE!, DEATH!, ...
[THEN - Mr. Miller cont...] In the Eightieth Congress I was the author of the sex pervert bill that passed this Congress and is now a law in the District of Columbia. It can confine some of these people in St. Elizabeths Hospital for treatment. [...]
[THEN - Mr. Miller cont...] [...] They are the sex perverts. Some of them are more to be pitied than condemned, because in many it is a pathological condition, very much like the kleptomaniac who must go out and steal, he has that urge; or like the pyromaniac, who goes to bed and wakes up in the middle of the night with an urge to go out and set a fire. [...]
NEXT: FLESH POTS OF INIQUITY!
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Due to the length of this post I've continued it at my overflow page: Continue reading... HERE
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I haven't heard too many anti-gay marriage Republicans or pundits or right wing media squawk toys bellowing lately about the God blessed sanctity of the Declaration of Independence. You know, only recently they couldn't shut up about it. Maybe they actually read it and this part made them nervous:
"We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." - Thomas Jefferson
He [Tom Delay] said that a "very telling difference" between the Democratic and Republican parties is that the former "is becoming the party of gay marriages" while the latter "is becoming the party of traditional values I think it's going to carry the day in the upcoming elections." - Tom Delay. [via Atrios via KnoxNews.com]
THEN (1950) and NOW (2004).
Let's revisit Tom DeLay's "party of traditional values", circa 1950, as it relates to an amendment to the Vorys amendment* to bar homosexuals from specific federal government employment. Somehow allowing homosexuals to be employed by the federal government in 1950 poses a clear danger (national security threat) to the very institution of government and the nation itself. Just as anti-gay marriage activists today howl that homosexuals are somehow or another a grave danger (national security threat) to the institution of marriage and family. The language THEN is just as wild-eyed and vitriolic and full of excitable alarmist quiverings as today's right-wing panic mongering and fear conjuring surrounding many current gay rights issues - including a good deal of the more dramatic hooting concerning the marriage and civil union debate.
*[Ed Note:] For brief background on the Vorys amendment: See: Neutrality Acts 1935-41
What follows are excerpts from the Congressional Record volume 96 Part 4, 81st Congress, 2nd Session, March 29 - April 24, 1950. WHERE NOTED: For comparrison sake I've inserted remarks from current anti-gay marriage/anti-gay rights activists and groups.
Comments from the floor of the House of Representatives, 1950.
Subject: Homosexuals in Government.
(Blaring BOLD TEXT emphasis and section heads are mine)
[BEGIN EXCERPTS:]
MILLER, Arthur Lewis, (Republican) Nebraska
[THEN - Mr. Miller:] Mr. Chairman, I realize that I am discussing a very delicate subject I cannot lay the bones bare like I could before medical colleagues. I would like to strip the fetid, stinking flesh off of this skeleton of homosexuality and tell my colleagues of the House some of the facts of nature. I cannot expose all the putrid facts as it would offend the sensibilities of some of you. It will be necessary to skirt some of the edges, and I use certain Latin terms to describe some of these individuals. Make no mistake several thousand, according to police records, are now employed by the Federal Government.
I offer this amendment to the Vorys amendment* in good faith... [...] Recently Mr. Peurifoy, of the State Department, said he had allowed 91 individuals in the State Department to resign because they were homosexuals. Now they are like birds of a feather, they flock together. Where did they go?
You must know what a homosexual is. It is amazing that in the Capital City of Washington we are plagued with such a large group of those individuals. Washington attracts many lovely folks. The sex crimes in the city are many.
[NOW:] "[T]he depravity that's tolerated and, in many instances, sanctioned by government officials brings to mind 'whited sepulchers full of dead men's bones.'... ~ Jan LaRue, Concerned Women for America - Also see: PFAW-February 19, 2004
[THEN - Mr. Miller cont...] In the Eightieth Congress I was the author of the sex pervert bill that passed this Congress and is now a law in the District of Columbia. It can confine some of these people in St. Elizabeths Hospital for treatment. [...]
[NOW:] Typical of such rhetoric was a recent Chuck Colson article about Billy, a doll being marketed in the gay community. Colson suggested that all Billy dolls should come with a plastic coffin, asserting that most gays are "men whose lives are tragically marked by disease, addition, misery, and early death." ~ See: PFAW/Gays as Diseased
[THEN - Mr. Miller cont...] [...] They are the sex perverts. Some of them are more to be pitied than condemned, because in many it is a pathological condition, very much like the kleptomaniac who must go out and steal, he has that urge; or like the pyromaniac, who goes to bed and wakes up in the middle of the night with an urge to go out and set a fire. [...]
[NOW:] The ad campaign followed a public furor touched off by Sen. [Trent] Lott's equating gays with alcoholics and kleptomaniacs,... ~ See: PFAW/Gays as Diseased
Due to the length of this post I've continued it at my overflow page: Continue reading... HERE
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