The Anti-GLBT Attack Machine“The court has become increasingly hostile to Christianity, and it poses a greater threat to representative government — more than anything, more than budget deficits, more than terrorist groups.”
— Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council. “Without [an] amendment [barring marriage for same sex couples], a single activist judge could unilaterally declare our law unconstitutional and legislate sodomite marriage from the bench.”
— Missouri state representative Ed Emery, R-Lamar, who introduced a resolution to impeach Judge Scott O. Wright. Radicals on the extreme fringe of American politics are conducting a campaign against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans that is rooted in fear, ignorance and hate. They have focused their venomous anger on judges who uphold rights for GLBT Americans. Extremists like the Rev. Pat Robertson, former Rep. Tom DeLay, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Phyllis Schlafly and Tony Perkins denounce so-called “activist” judges (typically judges who are willing to enforce equal rights for GLBT Americans) as dangerous and out-of-control. Judges have been compared to terrorists. They have been threatened with impeachment. There have even been “joking” suggestions of violence against judges. “Judicial activism ranks as one of the worst dangers in the world — according to a panel of experts that addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference.”
— From Citizen Link, a website of Focus on the Family, February 2006. More “mainstream” figures play a sort of good cop to the radicals’ bad cop. They use less explicit language, criticizing judges who supposedly “legislate from the bench,” without engaging in the crude attacks you hear from DeLay and Coulter. But the goal is the same: to reshape the courts into a rubber stamp for a radical agenda that includes denying equal rights to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans. “The sacred institution of marriage should not be redefined by a few activist judges.”
— President George W. Bush in May 2004, posted on the White House website. |
