Sullivan: "Christianists fight back"
21:17
Andrew Sullivan takes on two responses to his piece on Christianists: Ramesh Ponnuru at National Review and Hugh Hewitt.
Ponnuru’s condemnation of Sullivan as “self-righteous and overwrought” and “a voice for intolerance in our public life” is laughable given Ponnuru’s own writings: his latest book refers to Democrats as “The Party of Death.”
Hewitt’s rhetoric, similarly, is disingenuous when it isn’t despicable. He slams Sullivan for issuing “a call to embrace hate speech” in what Hewitt calls “a hit and run column,” which is about as far from the truth as one can get. Sullivan doesn’t shy away from offering extended explanations of posts that are controversial, and frequently answers readers’ emails in a thoughtful and considerate manner. The blogosphere would be a far better place with more writers like Sullivan and fewer like Hewitt. As an example of this, Sullivan’s response concludes with this:
I should stress: these people have every right to their views. They certainly have developed an arsenal of arguments and a body of thought to back them up. But this agenda, whatever else it is, cannot be described as mainstream Christianity. Its extremism, its enmeshment with partisan political power, its contempt for individual liberty, its certainty and arrogance and intolerance, demand that some other name be given to it. They have gotten away with too much for too long. It's time for mainstream Christians, in both parties, to fight back. And we are. [emphasis added]
Hewitt tries in vain to malign Sullivan’s support for same-sex marriage this way:
Not once in the long history of this country, not at the federal level or in any state, has a legislative body backed by the signature of an executive, defined marriage as open to two people of the same sex. In fact, whenever the question has been presented to popular vote, same sex marriage has been rejected overwhelmingly.
Bear in mind, though, that “the long history of this country” is irrelevant when the concept of homosexuality is barely a century old, and just over three decades have elapsed since it was considered a mental illness. Despite the widely disseminated disinformation from the Right about sexual orientation, progress among American attitudes has been astonishingly rapid: most Americans favor anti-discrimination laws as well as some sort of legal recognition for same-sex unions. Support is stronger among the young, which is a harbinger of continued success.