A group called Citizens for Community Values (with the tag line “Protecting the family since 1983”) is holding a”Values Voter Town Hall Sept. 18-20 in Washington, D.C., at the Omni Shoreham Hotel.
(Yes, I know. Ironic, isn’t it, that their “town hall” is the same weekend as our gay Pride.)
Here are a few of the topics listed : “De-Funding Planned Parenthood,” “The New Masculinity,”The Threat of Illegal Immigration,” “Marriage: Why It’s Worth Defending and Why Redefining it Threatens Religious Liberty,” “Global Warming Hysteria: The New Face of the ‘Pro-Death Agenda,'” and “Stem Cells: Fact vs. ‘Friction.'”
When I saw an ad for their little get-together, that list of topics alone was enough to engage my gag reflex. Then I saw the list of “confirmed speakers” and “invited speakers.”
First on the list of confirmed speakers was Stephen Baldwin. Besides starring in really bad sci-fi channel movies, Stephen has become a “born-again” Christian and a high-profile. spokesman against anything progressive and reasonable. Then I noticed our very own Gov. Rick Perry on the list, alongside Mike Huckabee, Bill O’Reilly, Mitt Romney, Phyllis Schlafly and more.
And the list of invited (but, I assume, not yet confirmed) speakers includes Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean.
Whooo boy! What a big bowl of stupid that all sounds like! You’ve got the three Ps — Perry, Palin and Prejean — who sometimes seem to share one brain cell between them, and then we add in Baldwin and O’Reilly. Not what I’d call the leading minds (or even bastions of truth).
And then there’s headline: “Rise to the Challenge! Rally to the Cause! Champion Life • Protect Marriage • Guard Religious Freedom • Limit Government • Secure Our Homeland • Answer the Left.”
They forgot to add “See the Wizard • Ask for a Brain • Find a Clue.”
3 Comments
enter the no spin zone
this looks fascinating in the most morbid way possible
thw sad part is that Texas tax payers will surely foot the bill for the good hair trip.
“Dogma voters” is the more fitting label. “Values voters” is a label invented by people who like to think of themselves as championing good human values. What many of them are pushing actually is dogma. “Values” are “the principles that help you to decide what is right and wrong, and how to act in various situations.” Cambridge Dictionary of American English. “Dogma” is “a fixed, esp. religious, belief or set of beliefs that people are expected to accept without any doubts.” Id. The two, we can only hope, overlap to some extent, but they are hardly the same. Some of what religious fundamentalists hold up as values others find plainly wrongheaded and even immoral. Labels count. Those pushing the “values voters” label hope it will help them pass off their dogma as values. If they want to push their dogma, that’s their right. But “dogma voters” they are, and that’s what I’ll call them.