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More than 130 years ago, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts dared to suggest that the United States put an end to the legal segregation of whites and blacks in public places. In Sumner’s opinion, this was a rather barbaric custom that made little sense in the post-abolition era. But Congressman William B. Read of Kentucky knew better. Ending public segregation of blacks would be but the first step; “the next step will be that they will demand a law allowing them, without restraint, to visit the parlors and drawing rooms of the whites, and have free and unrestrained social intercourse with your unmarried sons and daughters.” Civil rights were a slippery slope… give the darkies a few rights and they’ll want more, and then they’ll come for your children.

Not quite a century later, in 1958, a black woman in Virginia, Mildred Jeter, was engaging in all sorts of “unrestrained social intercourse” with her white husband, Richard Loving. So, naturally, Caroline County Sheriff R. Garnett Brooks and two of his deputy thugs entered the couple’s house in the wee hours of the morning and arrested them in bed for violating the state’s prohibition against interracial marriage (the couple had been married in D.C.). As their case made its way through the state’s medieval judicial system, a trial judge named Leon M. Bazile offered this erudite reading of the law’s finer points: “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

And, now, half a century later, homophobes are employing the same anti-logic as their segregationist predecessors in arguing that gay marriage will offend God’s delicate sensibilities and bring about the collapse of civilization as we know it. Glenn Beck warns that a tsunami of “polyamorous,” multiple-partner marriages will be unleashed upon U.S. society if a man is allowed to legally marry a man or a woman is allowed to legally marry a woman. Pat Robertson has divined that gay marriage will lead us down the slippery slope to legalized pedophilia, child molestation, and bestiality. Bill O’Reilly seems particularly fascinated by the prospect of legal bestiality; offering up comical images of humans married to turtles, ducks, goats, and dolphins …give the fags a few rights and they’ll want more, and then they’ll come for your children—and your pets.

Of course, you expect this sort of attitude from the Bible-thumping Chicken Littles of The Far Right, for whom self-righteously intolerant absolutism is a central creed. Much more revealing, and profoundly hypocritical, is the bigotry emanating from some African American leaders whom one might hope would be a little more self-aware in this regard. For instance, when the D.C. Council voted on May 5 to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere, the lone dissenter was none other than Marion Barry, an African American veteran of civil-rights struggles in decades past, who had to be taken to task for the obvious bigotry of his position by a gay, white member of the council, David Catania. Barry’s justification for his somewhat ironic stance was that he was siding with African American ministers “who stand on the moral compass of God.” Said moral ministers erupted with histrionic indignation when the vote was cast, invoking God and imperiled children with all the passion of the segregationists who came before them.

The moral of the story? Beware of anyone who claims to be in possession of God’s moral compass. He may do unto you as was done unto his forefathers.

{pic by tread}

In an indication of just how gun-crazed U.S. society truly is, a recent story on CNN states that “gun shops across the country are reporting a run on ammunition, a phenomenon apparently driven by fear that the Obama administration will increase taxes on bullets or enact new gun-control measures.” This comes not in response to any specific gun-control legislation under consideration on Capitol Hill (there is none), but reflects a general sense of paranoia fed by Right Wing pundits such as Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck, who have repeatedly warned their well-armed fans that the Obama administration is on the verge of seizing their beloved weapons. Some of their more delusional fans, like Pittsburgh cop-killer Richard Poplawski, have taken these gun-seizing conspiracy theories just a little too seriously.

The most revealing quote from the CNN story comes from a gun dealer in Colorado, who said that “the minority of our customers are stockpiling ammunition; the majority are standard shooters buying what they can.” This raises the intriguing sociological question of what it means to live in a society where so many people possess firearms that there is even such a thing as a “standard shooter.” The Brady Campaign, analyzing CDC statistics, provides a concise numerical answer:

• 30,694 people died from gun violence in 2005, including 12,352 people murdered; 17,002 people who killed themselves; 789 people killed accidentally; 330 killed by police intervention; and 221 who died, but their intent was not known.
• 69,863 people survived gun injuries in 2007, including 48,676 people injured in an attack; 4,291 people injured in a suicide attempt; 15,698 people shot accidentally; and 1,198 people shot in a police intervention

Or, as the Violence Policy Center succinctly puts it:

“Firearms are the second leading cause of traumatic death related to a consumer product in the United States and are the second most frequent cause of death overall for Americans ages 15 to 24. Since 1960, more than a million Americans have died in firearm suicides, homicides, and unintentional injuries. Public health research has shown that firearms violence is directly related to firearms availability and density. What separates America from other Western, industrialized nations is not our overall rate of violence, but our rates of lethal violence—which can be directly traced to gun availability.… Most Americans are surprised to learn that most gun deaths are not homicides, but preventable suicides. Even in homicide, the vast majority stem not from criminal activity, but are the result of arguments between people who know one another. Less than eight percent of all gun deaths are felony related. The most common scenario for homicide in America is an argument between two people who know one another.”

In the final analysis, this is what the self-proclaimed defenders of the Second Amendment are actually defending: a never-ending epidemic of preventable homicides and preventable suicides. It is a far cry from the right “to keep and bear arms” as part of a “well regulated militia.” It’s societal self-destruction.